Two thoughts this last time I watched Nixon vs. Kennedy (okay, a zillion thoughts; two I’m posting about here).
First: Holes. At the beginning of the Hobo Code flashback, Dick “Bowlcut” Whitman is digging a hole. For fun. His stepmother asks him to stop. In the opening of the final flashback in Nixon vs. Kennedy, Private Dick Whitman is digging a hole. Nice visual continuity, that.
Second: Fairness. In discussing the outcome of the presidential race, Cooper tells Don that Nixon will allow Kennedy’s election shenanigans in Chicago to go uncontested so that he’ll have a chance to run again. (It was more complicated than that, but that’s how he tells it.) Don says that it doesn’t sound fair, a phrase which brings astonishment to Cooper’s face.
Later, Peggy says that what happened in the office isn’t fair. The first time I saw this episode, I thought that the phrase of Peggy’s that pushed Don past his fear was “some people…people who aren’t good can do whatever they want” (I may have that imperfectly worded, but it’s close). But at that point I didn’t notice the parallel “fair”s, and we do know that Peggy parallels Don. I think the simple, plaintive “It’s not fair,” the child’s voice that was never answered, never soothed, is what ultimately compels Don to at last fight back.
Okay, one last parallel. Rachel calls Don a coward. Don remembers that he was a coward; he pissed himself. And y’know? He’s still pissing himself. Calling Pete’s bluff, he is, at last (in a way that honestly doesn’t soothe him, merely surprises him) not a coward.
Basket of Kisses 
May 21, 2008 at 7:39 am
just emailed you guys the script …
May 21, 2008 at 8:26 am
Yay! Thanks.
May 21, 2008 at 11:56 am
The holes I had definitely noticed. Young DBcW is yelled at to stop always digging holes, and then he is assigned, in Korea, to dig holes for a month (because it was one man doing the work of 20). (I think it was 20.)
The ‘fair’ was interesting. I am always surprised when I hear any adult use the word with any conviction. It is so terribly immature. But in 1960, Don’s saying that about the election (Don who does not vote, for secret obvious reasons), held with it the pre-Watergate innocence of the times. And when Peggy said it, too… I was moved, rather than repulsed. She is right. It isn’t fair. That she gets laughed at for doing her job. That black men got fired because white men were assholes.
May 21, 2008 at 12:24 pm
It was 20.
I didn’t think of the “secret obvious reason” that Don doesn’t vote! D’OH!
I thought his sense of it not being fair was kind of about how uneducated he is. As far as we can see, he was Dick, an ignorant and isolated farm boy whose “parents” undoubtedly didn’t provide any helpful stimulation, then he was Don, who was supposedly already an educated man. So Don’s smarts are all by the seat of his pants, and he just doesn’t know how some things work.
Peggy, though, has a definite childlike quality. “I don’t feel so swell” from The Wheel really sticks in my head. What a way to go into labor!
May 21, 2008 at 1:32 pm
In 2001, I was working with a large media company and we were going through a series of layoffs and I knew that I would be included in the next round.
So there was this long period before they announced the next layoffs and it was such a slow tortuous death, making everyone miserable.
One day I’m talking with my boss and he’s being completely unhelpful in sharing what he knows about the timing of this event and he just says it will happen soon, but just keep working.
So I say, brilliantly, “That’s not fair.” And he gives me the exact look that Cooper gave to Don.
You’re so right, Roberta – it’s a lame, weak useless thing to say. “It’s not fair” is really the subtext to all human events. The absence of fairness should be assumed at all times … just move on.
May 21, 2008 at 1:34 pm
As Calvin says “I know life isn’t fair. I’d just like it to be unfair in my favor for a change.”
May 21, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Deb, not voting is in the pilot, I’m nearly positive.
Dan, exactly. It’s always true, but it sure ain’t no argument!
May 21, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Oh, yeah, I know he says he doesn’t vote, I just didn’t realize until you posted that of course he can’t vote. There must be a number of gaps in his identity, as we’ve discussed in the past, and voting is a risk he surely doesn’t want to take.
May 21, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Right, and I’m saying it was in that pilot script. I mean, yes, we know that Weiner had plans for this backstory from the beginning, but the fact that Don Doesn’t Vote is in Smoke is just cool.
May 21, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Echoing Deborah’s thanks, dans. Fantastic reading.
The holes, of course, are an interesting metaphorical concept because Don’s life is filled with them. Both Betty and Roger are always “digging” to learn more about Don, but he keeps throwing in more dirt to keep them at bay.
In one of his more revealing moments, he tells Rachel about being a pallbearer, and how apprehensive he was at seeing the old people standing around the grave (a big hole). The image I immediately conjured up from his speech, was the dream sequence in “Vertigo.” In it, Jimmy Stewart approaches an open grave and falls in. The falling man looks exactly like the falling man in the MM title sequence:
May 21, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Not voting is definitely tied to identity change.
However on a slightly different note, I always thought that when he avoids answering Sally’s question about the electoral college, it’s because he actually doesn’t know the answer. Let’s not forget that Don is most likely highly undereducated, in a formal sense.
May 21, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I was discussing Hobo Code with a friend one day, and we got into a “debate” over how honest Don is with his kids. He has the scene where he tells his son that he can ask him anything, but he lies to him daily. My friend didn’t see that. I pointed out that this child thinks his name is Draper, and it’s not, and then there are the lies of omission — his children know nothing about their grandparents on their father’s side or his background.
Telling his son he’ll always telling him the truth only means that Don lies to himself, too.
When Roger came to dinner, I wonder if any of the later fight was due to Roger saying that he always pictured Don as coming from a rural area because of the way he talks. Sounding authentically urban has to be difficult, because speeh patterns are largely a product of environment, and you don’t always know when you sound different from the people around you.
For instance, the people around me have no concept that they sound like extras in *Fargo.* 🙂
May 23, 2008 at 4:20 pm
[…] and first to write brilliantly on the bird theme, (under the name grinandbearit), sent us this clip in a comment, and it was too good to bury. Close to the end, look how it resembles the opening […]