Roberta said it first: Don loves Rachel.

Until my DVDs came, I had only seen Marriage of Figaro once—the only episode of Mad Men for which that was true. I didn’t start saving them right away, and around the time they were rebroadcast, I was in the midst of switching from Tivo (rocks) to Io DVR (sucks) and screwed up the recording. It’s an amazing and important episode, and I’d only seen it once. So I rewatched it right away, pausing only to write up everything and watch an extra feature.

Anyway.

In the early part of the season, I wondered if Don wasn’t seriously, even suicidally, depressed. And certainly his helpless sorrow in Marriage seemed to point in that direction. It seemed to be about the darkness of the American dream, the dissatisfaction of his supposedly perfect life, a cry of “is this all there is?” And that’s all true. But on re-viewing, I see how everything he sees in the darkness that descends upon his sunny Saturday has to do with the kiss he shared with Rachel Menken Friday night.

He wakes up to see the cufflinks. He looks in on a couple kissing, and the man lifts her chin, and she’s a brunette, and Don is lost. He goes out, lost. And comes home with a big dog. Not a puppy; a big dog like the ones on the roof. Because Rachel said that sometimes, that’s all a little girl needs.

Most of this Roberta already said; better than I. She understood that dog thing. When I was watching it, I actually had forgotten how much her post was about that dog.

But there was that one other thing; that kiss. At the birthday party, a married couple kiss. It explicitly echoes Don and Rachel on the roof. She is dark haired, they have a moment, he lifts her chin. And that captivates and devastates Don; he leaves soon after. So I saw that, and I wrote this post, and then I watched the episode again, this time with commentary on, and I was so pleased to learn that Matt Weiner made sure the second kiss echoed Don and Rachel’s kiss; that was on purpose. And that couple, they’re the only happily married couple we see, so that means more than just a visual echo; to Don, it’s his chance, and he blew it.

Where have we heard that before?

Nixon vs Kennedy. Rachel to Don, when he wants them to run away together. Don to Pete, when he attempts blackmail. You haven’t thought this through. You haven’t thought this through.

In the Wheel, Don learns that Adam has hung himself.

Don had determined that he wants nothing to do with Adam, ever. And gave him $5,000 and orders never to resurface.

Don hadn’t considered that he would ever want to have a relationship with Adam, but that changed.

Don hadn’t considered that giving Adam that money and sending him out of his life forever might wound him beyond repair, but it did.

He thought. We watched him. He thought and thought and thought.

But somehow he didn’t quite think it through.

Not if she could help it.

Awhile ago we got into a feisty discussion about Rachel’s reaction to Don wanting to run away in NvK.

(And lately we’ve been so filled up with news and scoops. But we still love talking about the show!)

No. Something happened and, I want to go and I want you to come with me and I don’t want to come back.

What happened?

What does it matter, isn’t this what you want?…

…You want your children to go on without a father? You know how that felt.

Are you having an attack of conscience after all this?

No. I’m watching you talk because I feel I don’t know you.

You know more about me than anyone.

You won’t even tell me what happened.

And so I think this is where it begins.

In Don’s partial defense, I don’t think that he can physically speak the words (the answer to ‘what happened’.) But I think that his anger at Rachel serves to seal this window shut; I believe that Don doesn’t tell Rachel what happened. Ever. Regardless of how this scene turns out. They run off to Buenos Aires? She still never finds out why.

And subltely this relationship shifts from one of honesty-beyond-Don’s-wildest-imaginings to one where there are lies, mistrust and manipulations. Now Don has withheld from her once, and it is a big one, and she took it, and so he can withhold from her again.

(She didn’t take it, of course. That’s what makes Rachel Rachel, and not Betty.)

I’m not saying that Don ever had with Betty what he had with Rachel. But I stand by that Don and Betty do have a marriage. And that while, yes, Betty was absolutely perfect for Don on paper, he was also genuinely drawn to her. I think that at some point Don opened up to Betty, if simply by loving her, from a deeper place than he’d ever accessed prior.

Okay so maybe it wasn’t that deep a place. But remember, this is a guy who doesn’t believe in love. Love was invented by guys like him to sell nylons. And okay so maybe Betty was an easy mark; certainly she was easy to lie to and to withhold from. And let’s face it, Betty followed Don’s ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ rulebook. She married a man who won’t discuss his past. But now the lies, the withholding, and the anger at Betty if/when any of these things are challenged; these are all the fabric of the Drapers’ marriage.

Not only was Don angry and defensive with Rachel, but he was manipulative and mean. And we’d wanted to think Don would never treat Rachel this way. And now he has.

Are you having an attack of conscience after all this?

So, Eme (sometimes Eme Kay), Basket of Kisses reader and frequent discussion chime-in-er, purchased herself the production script of the Wheel (how did we survive before eBay?), and was terrifically kind enough to share it with us truly. I was expecting to enjoy it for the cool factor, but what I didn’t expect was to come across lines that were cut. And I’m not talking about lines that were chopped out by AMC after the original broadcast; the version of the Wheel that I have recorded is in fact the uncut one (with the ‘deleted scene‘). No, I’m talking about lines that never made it to air. Possibly never made it to shoot.

There’s plenty in this treasure chest, but let me start with this:

(I omitted stage direction– Cooper flips through book– but left in character direction; emphasis mine for lines that were not included in the episode as it aired.)

DON
Are those the legendary secret files of Bert Cooper?

COOPER
No. I have to write a report to the board. My sister Alice is quite a business woman. It’s hard to be scrutinized by your sister.

DON
Those reports are always the same. This year, big, next year, bigger.

Okay so can I just say, Alice? Let’s hope we get to meet her in Season Two! Fascinating premise, and this goes back to the discussions we’ve had regarding acceptable (by BoK standards) celebrity cameos.

COOPER
(laughs)
I got a call from Abraham Menken. I’m sure you know that his daughter will be unavailable for the next three months– taking some sort of ocean voyage to Paris and whatnot.

Don tries to hide his surprise.

DON
I hadn’t heard that.
(then)
But otherwise?

COOPER

(irritated)
There is no otherwise. Why is this man calling me?

And I take a moment right here to appreciate the acting. And acting in general. You read the words on the page, and then you hear how much the actor breathes into it. A primitive insight, perhaps, but there you go.

DON
(firmly)
I don’t know. Was he unhappy?

COOPER
Roger told me you had difficulty working with this woman. As a partner, I do not expect your personal preferences to interfere with our business.

DON
Who says they have?

COOPER
It was the tone of his voice. He’s her father.

That’s it, cowboy. If I don’t see you, have a nice holiday.

Holy! So it seems that, as it was originally scripted, Cooper did not see all when it came to Rachel and Don’s affair. Which, for the record, I had never been convinced about; the words ‘personal preferences’ hearkened directly back to everyone’s take on Don’s relationship with Rachel based on their first horrible meeting in the pilot. It was Cooper’s “cowboy” that cast doubt, for me.

But I’m wondering… am I better informed now, or was the line cut for the purpose of giving the impression that Cooper knows?

This is one of those times I wish I could speak to Matthew Weiner. I am generally quite content with the nebulous nature of this show; all the gray areas and answers that Mr. Weiner may not specifically have. But this one is specific and I think there’s an answer.

(Wait. ALICE COOPER??? HA HA HA HA HAAAHH!!!!)

I have a source on this, and she’s a friend of mine with an inside track, and she totally won’t give up any information until it’s like public anyway, but I wrote her last night after reading Hullabaloo’s comment. I figure, let me try again. getting. some information. out of my friend. I’ve bugged her bunches of times and she keeps blowing me off. She’s a lovely young girl, but also a little ditzy. (So like, she forgets I’m dying for information she has, she forgets she has said no to me. It’s all good.)

From my friend:

Yeah, she is a series regular on Sons of Anarchy……she’ll be back as Rachel, but I don’t know how many episodes.

Notice the number of dots in the ellipses. Ditzy. But a good girl, nonetheless. And so, here we are, chock full of scoopy insideness, right? Well, it’s something, anyway. dot dot dot dot dot dot

(I don’t usually issue spoiler warnings, because we started this blog after the first season had aired, but this little entry does reveal something from the finale, so if you’re about to see it for the first time this weekend, just hang out and read this next week.)

In the Wheel, Don finds out, through a disgruntled Bertram Cooper, that Rachel has gone on a three month ocean voyage.

Rachel’s objection to Don’s let’s-run-away panic was, among other things, that she couldn’t just up and leave her life.

(Though I’m not gonna lie. A three month ocean voyage seems a perfect plan to get away from and potentially over a romance gone bad. Especially one that mixes with your professional life.)

But also of course, it is ironic because Don’s let’s-run-away panic was, as it turned out, premature and unnecessary. Everything turned out fine. Oh, it’s hindsight week here at BoK.

Grace Dent of the Huffington Post seems to be a Mad Men fan.

Or is she?

She wrote a fun piece today all about fashion on TV, featuring lovely photos from Mad Men. Three of them, in fact, all Joan.

And yet, she refers to Betty Draper.

Betty Draper from Mad Men does ice cool femininity better than anyone since Grace Kelly.

See? That’s Joan. Ice cool is Joan. What is funny, of course, that she has the Grace Kelly thing right.

So actually, if you investigate further, there’s a whole other section with a shot of Rachel. Which is quite nice:

Yeah, suddenly that land is looking all “glamorous”, “swoonsome” and “va-va-voom”, to quote some recent reviews. And you can see why. No man here would walk around in oversized T-shirts and cropped combat trousers; instead, it’s dark grey suits and smart tailoring. As for the women, it’s all tight cardigans, wasp-waisted full skirts and ladylike dresses – in short, a look Anna Wintour has been wearing for years. The only kind of trousers a woman sports are Audrey Hepburn-esque narrow cropped ones, and only if she’s a bit of a rebel, which on this show seems to mean “recently divorced”.

In Long Weekend, we see Don and Rachel connecting the dots. Maybe the first time I saw the episode his arrival at her door came from nowhere, or maybe I was just taken with their mutual attraction, but on closer examination, they are connecting at a deep level.

We arrive at Sterling Cooper in a Nixon campaign meeting. Don wants to set aside current ad ideas and tell “the story” of Nixon. He calls Kennedy “a recent immigrant who bought his way into Harvard,” On the other hand,

“Nixon is from nothing. A self-made man, the Abe Lincoln of California, who was Vice President of the United States six years after getting out of the Navy. Kennedy, I see a silver spoon. Nixon, I see myself.”

He sees himself. He sure does; he came from nothing, went into the Army, came out a new man (literally) and in a short time (six years?) he was a big success.

Later the same day, there’s a Menken Department Store meeting. There, Don kind of poo-poos Abe (there’s that name again) Menken’s history of coming from nothing (like Lincoln; like Nixon). Rachel takes umbrage:

“Excuse me, this is not some phony story you people print in your Fourth of July circulars. My father actually started with nothing and he made it into everything we’re talking about. Who here can say that?”

Don. Don can say that. And although Rachel doesn’t know that about Don, he must feel like she’s looking right through him, and like he and she are the only two people in that room who understand each other.

So of course, that’s the night they sleep together. But more importantly, that’s the night he finally tells the truth about himself to another human being. And it’s so important, so powerful, that I offer it here in its entirey:

“You told me your mother died in childbirth. Mine did too. She was a prostitute. I don’t know what my father paid her but when she died they brought me to him and his wife. And when I was ten years old he died. He was a drunk who got kicked in the face by a horse. She buried him and took up with some other man. I was raised by those two sorry people.”

He came from nothing. She understands. She kisses his hair.

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.

What a lovely and interesting thread I found woven through Long Weekend.

Roger to Mirabelle: Look at your skin, it’s translucent.

Don to Rachel: He’s gray and weak. His skin looks like paper.

Moments later, Don: Sit with me. Rachel: Why? Don: Because I feel like you’re looking right through me over there.

So now I wonder if that was the theme of this episode; seeing through to the truth. Underbellies exposed. You know what’s on the other side of all that crap, Roger? A heart attack. You know why your roommate is your roommate, Joan? Dooyah?

There is one moment in this episode where we catch a shine of reality that has been previously unexplored. In the scene where Roger tries to get Joan to spend time with him, and they talk about the movie the Apartment, Joan pipes in with, The way those men treated that poor girl; handing her around like a tray of canapés. She tried to commit suicide. That is the first, perhaps only in the whole first season, indication that Joan is less than content with her lifestyle. Maybe a little lonely, maybe a little angry, maybe a little not proud.