Mad Men 2x01 Reaction
Added 2025-07-28 00:57:45 +0000 UTC
Comments
lol that look at the coffee was great
Blink More
2025-08-02 14:59:37 +0000 UTCI've managed dozens of people in my career and from what we've seen so far, Don is a pretty bad manager. He regularly misses meetings or turns up 30+ mins late. He leaves the office randomly at random times with no warning, then gets mad at you if you're late. He's extremely critical and demanding which often results in better work but demoralizes people and makes his reports terrified of him, which sometimes results in worse work because they don't want to raise issues with him. He's a bit of an asshole and regularly threatens to reprimand/fire his reports. In terms of creative mentorship he gives some genuinely amazing advice and his copywriting + editing + general overseeing of the work is very very good, but he also gives conflicting advice ("you get on a plane to see the hint of a woman's thigh" / "who told you [sex sells]?") with very little attempts to explain what he means, leaving his reports to basically guess what he wants.... then he gets annoyed annoyed when they guess wrong. Don never adjusts his management style in any way for his reports, he is just the same and expects them to adapt to him - which is fine to an extent, its his ship - but most good managers would say there's compromise involved. Don fires clients he doesn't like with no regard for the work put in by his reports. In the real world, on a long enough scale I think retention would be abysmal under Don, he's just not a fun guy to work for when there are many other options. (when Don says "I'm uninvolved" he doesn't mean he's literally not involved, he means he's emotionally uninvolved by the work, it's just another ad he'd walk by on the subway. Mohawk is his client, as we will see in 2x02). I can't really talk more without referencing future knowledge but there's a character (think CGC) I think is a much better manager and also directs great work. It's good to compare the two.
Kara
2025-07-31 12:43:11 +0000 UTCLola mentioned Don being a bad leader because he is too vague with what he wants/likes. His job however is as a creative leader, it is not his client and it is not for him to come up with the idea. That is their job, he literally says "I am uninvolved". He is trying to get the crew to come up with the idea. So he suggests different approaches. He simplifies the problem for them when they bring up the puns, and he suggests they need to think of a common link between anyone who might need to travel by plane. He mentions the "you are the product" to Peggy, because he wants her to understand that the product of the airline is the people that they want to travel with their planes. So they need to come up with slogans/ad campaign that targets the things people get out of going or leaving places. In his case he pointed at the "I love You Daddy" card from his daughter. If he travels home by plane is to return to his daughter.
Saul
2025-07-29 02:06:03 +0000 UTC100%. Nobody should be judging anyone for how they act after such a traumatic event โค๏ธ
Kara
2025-07-28 18:24:49 +0000 UTCI got pregnant young, around Peggy's age. It took me around 3 months before I realized it. At the time I had very irregular periods so missing a couple months wasn't unusual. And I had almost zero morning sickness or other symptoms. The birth itself was a traumatic and surreal event. I can't imagine how it would feel to have no clue you were pregnant the whole time and then randomly go into labor and give birth to a baby you weren't at all expecting or prepared for. I've seen comments saying Peggy was cruel to turn away from her baby in the hospital. Nope not cruel, very understandable. I've always found childbirth to be extremely surreal and disconcerting, and that's even under normal/happy circumstances! Maybe it's because I wasn't given any drugs lol.
Taya
2025-07-28 17:08:37 +0000 UTCYeah lol
Kara
2025-07-28 16:34:46 +0000 UTCKinsey 100% owns a copy of Meditations in an Emergency. Whether he "gets it" is another story.
Mike
2025-07-28 15:40:09 +0000 UTCBefore watching I wanna chime in on the kids thing, I decided years ago that I'm never gonna have kids, I just don't want to sacrifice that large a part of my life for them. That said, life hack: sibling that has kids. Now you can be cool aunt/uncle and know that the hard stuff is not your problem. I love my nephew to bits but at the end of the day I'm glad he's only here 2/3 days a week.
Nina
2025-07-28 12:25:56 +0000 UTCSPOILERS: [ROT13.com] to decipher - Ybyn fnlf fur jnagf n fgbelyvar bs n jbzna fgehttyvat jvgu harkcrpgrq zbgureubbq, Zvyran fnlf fur jnagf Wbna gb trg zber sbphf n srj frnfbaf yngre (F5). Nfx bs Znq Zra naq lbh funyy erprvir.
Kev
2025-07-28 07:07:01 +0000 UTCFYI there's a small editing mistake around 25 mins, the same line plays twice. I love the ending of this episode, really beautiful shots, music and narration.
Mark M
2025-07-28 06:35:40 +0000 UTCWhat are children but a weakness, a folly, a futility? Through them, you imagine you cheat the great darkness of its victory. You will persist forever, in some form or another. As if they will keep you from the dust. ๐ค
INFJ-T Tyrone
2025-07-28 04:36:05 +0000 UTCThis is correct, the OG Don Draper was born in 1917 (we can know this from the box) and would have been 43 in 1960, when our Don was 34.
Kara
2025-07-28 03:58:31 +0000 UTCI love how excited you are to watch the show! And I also love that it seems to be a job for you that fits well around other fun life stuff. Go to the beach girlies, you only live once! When I'm rewatching Mad Men there's a point in S2 where it becomes the best thing I've ever seen and I can't stop watching. I'm not sure when, but it's coming. Watching 2 a week with discussions + time to process is a nice change of pace from binging like 5 episodes every day lol.... though I'm sure you wish you could ๐ Don's reading at the end is a snippet from the poem Mayatovsky by Frank O'Hara, featured in the book he reads "Meditations on an Emergency". Frank O'Hara was a prominent gay poet in the 60s. He was basically a manic gay yearner, and many of his poems are about his male partners, love, and the loneliness of New York when those people go away. The guy in the bar thinks Don won't like it because Don looks like the straightest businessman ever... how could someone who looks like Don + works in some stuffy office ever connect to a lonely gay man writing about how depressed and cold NYC feels when his gay lover leaves town? But Don reads it anyway and likes it enough to send to someone. Don is a collection of interesting contradictions, an intensely thoughtful and creative magpie mind trapped insight this handsome but normative shell, collecting ideas from every source. Who else in that office could read these poems and actually get something from them? Sal obviously, Ken (the magazine author) probably, maybe Peggy, maaaaybe Kinsey... hard to picture anyone else *getting it*. Clearasil is an anti-acne (spots, zits) product that is still popular today, especially with teenagers. A call girl / "party girl" is a prostitute, "call girl" is still used today. It's not that important but the contents of the box Adam sent Don confirm that the original Don Draper was 8/9 years older than our Don, he was a graduate paying off medical school via military service + would have been 43 in the pilot episode, when our Don was 34. ๐ฅค๐ฌ https://youtu.be/YDLwivcpFe8
Kara
2025-07-28 03:56:08 +0000 UTCI think the real Don Draper is about 7-8 years older than Don. In Nixon vs Kennedy, Pete literally says "Don Draper was 43 years old in which case you look remarkably good" because Don is around 34 yo there. I think Don is using his real age when referring to himself but the real Don's birthday.
Eric Viola
2025-07-28 03:22:35 +0000 UTCI think the real Don Draper is about 7-8 years older than Don. In Nixon vs Kennedy, Pete literally says "Don Draper was 43 years old in which case you look remarkably good" because Don is around 34 yo. I think Don is using his real age when referring to himself but the real Don's birthday.
Eric Viola
2025-07-28 03:22:17 +0000 UTC9:50 And mind you that's the real Don's "would be" age, now deceased. Dick's true age is around 32-33 years old if I'm not mistaken. He clearly hasn't aged too well.
Gaboxxy
2025-07-28 03:11:29 +0000 UTCI had the exact same fear as you two when Betty was negotiating with the mechanic. I kept thinking "What if this goes wrong?" I also thought "What if she WANTS this to go wrong?" Even though nothing happened, the whole situation was so stressful. One correction to something you took from the episode: Pete wasn't saying that Hildy bought his wife Trudy the chocolates. He was saying that Hildy found the Valentine's Day note that Trudy had put in his lunch for him to find. Instead of appreciating the thought and effort, he was whining because he finds such a thing embarrassing. When it comes to having children, I'm somewhat neutral (I don't want kids, but I'm not opposed to the idea of having children). But I also think that to do a good job raising children you need to WANT them. So many children are neglected and abused because their parents had children out of obligation instead of honest desire, and were unprepared to handle the pressure and demands. So with that in mind, to me, being neutral is the same thing as being opposed. My great-grandparents once ran a front business to cover up an abortionist. They ran a fish market, and the doctor worked out of the back rooms in the same building. The doctor either owned the whole building, or had an arrangement with the owner, I'm not sure which. Calling the fish market a "front" is a slight exaggeration (it was a real market), but the doctor only rented out the space because he needed some kind of retail business operating in the building as a cover for people coming in-and-out. So the doctor rented out the front of the building, and in return my great-grandparents didn't pay attention to the pregnant women who would walk through into the back rooms. Juanita is played by Jennifer Newsom, who now is actually married to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California.
JBK405
2025-07-28 03:09:24 +0000 UTCBack in the 70's my uncle had a girlfriend... they broke up and he never saw her again. Fast forward to a few years ago, my sister was poking around on ancestry.com & discovered we were related to someone unknown in England, and that he had to be our cousin. Turns out my uncle's gf got pregnant without telling him and gave the baby up for adoption. My sister was the one who had to give him the call and tell him he had a 40-something year old son he never knew about. They have since met and become very close, but my cousin's birth mom has refused any contact with him.
Taya
2025-07-28 03:04:05 +0000 UTCAbortion (up until the 24th week of pregnancy) was legalized in New York state in 1970. Before then there were limited exceptions for cases where life was endangered. The sentence for illegally performing an abortion was 4-20 years, but there were certain 'safe' doctors you could go to and pay, and many more unsafe backroom practitioners of varying degrees of competency.
Kara
2025-07-28 02:59:03 +0000 UTCThat pop for dr Kepner
cheech
2025-07-28 02:58:56 +0000 UTCI knew someone would clarify this but tbh, I never knew the time gap between S1 and S2 was 14 months until after several rewatches + looking it up. It definitely feels more like 6-9 months.
Kara
2025-07-28 02:56:53 +0000 UTCJack Nicholson grew up believing his mother was his older sister. She had him when she was 17; he only learned the truth from Time magazine reporters when he was 37. The serial killer Ted Bundy also believed his mother to be his sister, he learned the truth himself by digging up his birth certificate. A man who lived down the street from where I grew up learned a few years ago he had a sister he had never met through ancestry.com. It turned out the parents conceived the mystery sister before they were married and just before the man was shipping out to Korea. While pregnant, the woman left the state and boarded with relatives 1000 miles away. In the only photo they have of her in this period she's concealing her stomach with a pillow.
Derek Halvorson
2025-07-28 02:39:08 +0000 UTCWe've skipped forward almost 14 months between seasons. The Season 1 finale takes place on Thanksgiving in November 1960. Jackie Kennedy's tour of the White House was broadcast on Valentine's Day in 1962. Time flies! The beatnik in the bar telling Don that he wouldn't like Frank O'Hara is a fun inversion of that "You can't go out there" scene in Season 1, especially in an episode where Don's ability to "get" the younger generation is under scrutiny at work. Also I deeply love the idea that Don is in a movie theatre watching a Pinocchio matinee while everyone is waiting for him in that boardroom.
Mike
2025-07-28 01:40:01 +0000 UTCIt's best to consider the schedule as the order of which things will be uploaded, instead of a set day. Start with The Bear on Tuesday, and if they're late on an upload just shift it by one and assume they wont fix it until next week or two.
Antonio
2025-07-28 01:36:40 +0000 UTCOk, so just to clarify, it's official now that Monster's reaction days will be on Fridays and Mondays? (instead of Fridays and Sundays, like it was before).
Floweyyyy
2025-07-28 01:24:10 +0000 UTCAbortion was definitely ILLEGAL in NY in 1960 ! Joan was talking about doctors that were administering abortions illegally !
Eric Viola
2025-07-28 01:07:01 +0000 UTC
