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[[folder: Sharpshootin' Betty]]
* Betty Draper's sniping of the pigeons at the end of "Shoot". SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome to some, a touch of DisproportionateRetribution to me. The neighbor is raising the birds, and the Drapers' dog Polly grabs one in her mouth, injuring but not killing it. The neighbor snaps at Sally that if the dog comes into his yard, he'll shoot it. Now granted, that's a pretty dickish thing to say, particularly to a kid, and Betty mentions that she'll talk to him to see what happened (she never does). Cut to the end of the episode where, after being dumped from the modeling shoot, she grabs an air rifle and starts taking potshots at the birds as they fly by. Look, Betty, I get it: the guy was a jerk to your daughter, but I'd be annoyed too if a dog had randomly killed grabbed one of my trained birds, and moreso if the bird ''died'' from the resulting injuries. He didn't threaten Sally herself, and you have no way of knowing if he even meant what he said. So without checking in to get this guy's side of the story and without any other provocation, Betty decides to do what the neighbor had previously only threatened. Bad form.
** Betty is well-established to have mental issues.
** Or you could look at it from a completely different standpoint. Much of the episode drew significant parallels between Betty and those pigeons - pretty little housepets, beloved but trapped in their gilded cages (there's a good reason why Don's nickname for her was Birdy). It's very plausible that she didn't intend to kill the pigeons with that gun, but to ''scare them away'', in hopes that they might fly away and live the life of freedom that she herself couldn't obtain. You'll note that she didn't seem to actually hit any of them. Maybe Betty's just a poor shot (which several of her family members should probably be grateful for), but I'd imagine it was intentional. Of course, as season 3 developments would indicate, she probably didn't know that domestic animals tend not to do so well in the wild...
*** That's [[FridgeBrilliance brilliant]]!
** I like the explanation about not actually killing them, but I have to disagree. She's hitting them and killing them (an air rifle will do that to a bird), but they don't show it on screen. I think Betty's actions are justified to the point that she gets back at the man for saying what he said to Sally, but the way she does it (killing the birds) is cruel to the birds.
*** I'm pretty sure by this point we can safely say that Betty has a lot of anger and violent tendencies that she had bottled up inside her. Her treatment of Sally is proof of that.
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[[folder: Doesn't anyone love Don?]]
* No one ever seems to have looked for the Real Don Draper besides Anna. Was he an orphan with no siblings or friends? It's possible that whoever was looking went to Anna and was told they'd been divorced and she didn't know where he was. But it's still odd that this man who supposedly returned alive from Korea just vanished.
** Real Don seemed like something of a jerk. He didn't really care about Anna, only marrying her as a consolation prize because her sister wasn't available. She didn't appear to be all that upset when she found out he died. Maybe no one liked him enough to care that he was missing.
** Perhaps it just wasn't out of character for him to come back to the states, abandon his wife, and start selling cars in New Jersey.
** The 1960s were a lot different than today. How exactly would someone (presumably in the Western US based on Anna living in California) look for him? First of all after the Korean War would you really think twice if an acquaintance or friend failed to return home? It would take an extremely dedicated friend to go beyond asking his wife about it. They didn't have Facebook or the internet to look names up, where would they even start? The one person who realistically would look for him, his wife, did so. Who else would even know he didn't die, and would go cross country to track down someone who most likely never came back from the battlefield? It would be jarring and completely unbelievable for someone other than his wife to guess he might be alive at all, let alone somehow track him down.
** Most people who weren't his wife who wanted to look for him would start with the obvious person -- his wife. His wife knows he's dead and would simply inform them of that fact.
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[[folder: Take the Lane to Ignominy, or the Pryce of doing business?]]
* Lane Pryce is panicking in "Christmas Waltz" because he owes the British government a lot of money in back taxes. He is apparently being double taxed in the US and UK since there are no tax treaties in effect yet. However, he lives and works in the US at this point so why is he so desperate? He could have his lawyer try stalling for a few months until he can raise the money and avoid going back to Britain for a while.
** Judging by the tone of his lawyer's voice, the offer was either a time limited settlement offer or one that already had been stalled for quite some time.
** He would almost certainly lose his visa and be extradited for trial if he is convicted.
** Business partnerships are complex, and require very firm rules, as any individual failing can create a domino effect. If Lane (who is in charge of the books) starts asking for cash advances, not only does it prompt others to ask for them in times of need, it also puts his handling of the books in doubt, as he would be presumed to be more likely to dip in, and may reveal a major problem, as he would have to be in some financial difficulty he hasn't disclosed to the partnership previously that he was required to.
** English businessmen traditionally put honour and reputation before everything else. It was essential to what little self-worth Lane had that he maintain the image of a steadfast earner and provider. It's why he couldn't ask for a loan even though Don and Roger would certainly have fronted the money: he would have to live in the shadow of appearing even weaker, on top of stirring up questions about his competence as the finance director given his inability to manage his own finances.
** Some food for thought here: Lane's childhood had something to do with him embezzling funds. When we see his father, a severely elderly man, come into Lane's home, tell him what's what, and quite literally put him under heel, you have to ask yourself, "Physically, Lane -- who can, when he wants to, fight and beat younger men -- could easily overpower him, and he is not living under his roof or anything so he's not financially tied to him." So why? Why did Lane allow his old ass father to manhandle him like this? It's likely that Pryce senior has been doing that to Lane ever since he was a boy. The stern father to be respected and feared ... or else. Young or old, Lane will always fear his father. This probably stifled Lane's confidence in himself and development. With a father like that, would ''you'' ever tell him when you messed up or did something wrong? Hell no, you're too afraid of what he would do to you if you did so you would hide it or fix it by yourself if you could. This inclination must've continued into Lane's adult life. Which is why instead of asking his colleagues for help or even just a loan (Don also gave a much larger amount of money to Pete Campbell), he tried to 'fix' the problem himself and cover his tracks. This action spelled his downfall, and the impetus of why he would take such an action stems from his childhood.
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[[folder: Don's cars]]
* In the pilot, Don arrives at his house in a 1959 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88, yet in late season one and early season two he'd driving a 1961 Dodge Polara. What happened to the Oldsmobile? Don doesn't seem like he would replace a late model, upper mid range car with an only slightly newer, lower end, entry level car.
** I don't remember, but was one of them his wife's car or was that a different car or maybe just an inconsistency?
*** Betty drives a 1957 Ford Country Sedan station wagon in the pilot till season three, when she inherits her father's Continental. I'm thinking inconsistency, since he also drives a 1960 Buick Invicta convertible from episode 3 to the end of season one, then drives the Dodge for the first half of season two (then crashes it and buys the Cadillac).
** At the time a Dodge Polara was a medium-price car (Chrysler's entry level car was the Plymouth) and most better-off people changed cars every three years with lots of people doing so annually.
** That Don would replace a series of X-framed GM hardtops and convertibles with a Dodge post sedan (a make known for ruggedness and used by many states' state troopers in its day) kinda fits with the troper who theorized on the WMG that Don had destroyed more than one car via drunk driving.
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[[folder: Sterling Cooper's unwritten UltimateJobSecurity policy]]
Prior to the main characters [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere walking out to start SCDP]] at the end of season three, there are a few people in the office who somehow keep their jobs despite exhibiting behaviour that could be construed as ''begging'' to be fired...
* Paul Kinsey. No-one thinks highly of him and in one scene it's noted that he has ''never'' contributed an active ad campaign to the agency. He also steals a typewriter from the office, which leads to an innocent secretary almost getting fired. When Don's pitching for the Madison Square Garden project, Kinsey heavily criticises said project ''in front of the people Don's pitching to''. Surely a sackable offence, but in the event he's just moved off that particular project. That said, he's [[PutOnABus left behind]] when most of the main characters leave SC to form SCDP. Subsequently he never lasts long anywhere, which makes one wonder why Don, who was prepared to let a more valuable worker (Sal) go for less, did not just get rid of him.
* Lois Sadler uses her time on the switchboard as a means of eavesdropping on conversations and using the information she learns from this as a source of gossip. When moved to the secretarial pool, she fails as Don's secretary and goes back to the switchboard. In "Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency", she gets drunk at an office party and ''runs over a guy's foot with a lawnmower''. Despite this, in a later episode she's ''still working there'' (as Kinsey's secretary), even though few -- if any -- of her co-workers think highly of her.
* Although he's a lot more valuable to SC than Kinsey and Lois, Don himself has slept with some female clients (thus potentially poisoning business relationships), is rather insulting to other clients (who pay the bills) and sometimes checks himself out whenever he feels like -- such as the time he abandons Pete in California for two weeks, at a conference he pushed himself onto, in order to hang out with some jet-setters who ultimately prove to be too weird even for him.
* In addition to the above, how is Pete -- who actually does get fired, only to be reinstated before he's had time to drown his sorrows -- somehow ''not'' instantly ''persona non grata'' to Don after his pitiful blackmail attempt? In future episodes, Don doesn't just tolerate his presence; he's actually moderately encouraging to the guy in some cases, and he gets recruited to SCDP.
** I assumed that things were tense up until Pete tried to out Don to Bert. Bert gives Don full permission to fire the guy but advises restraint and we see afterwards they both find a working relationship together. So Don realizes that he can actually trust Pete, because Pete doesn't ever really bring Dick up again. Doesn't go to Roger, doesn't spread the secret to others. And when he needs Pete to, Pete will take a bullet to keep Don's secret safe and the firm's most valuable asset in place. In fact, in Season 7 he's a huge defender of Don's from being fired. Yes, its because of his singular talents, but clearly Pete took Bert's advice to heart. There was far more to be earned by keeping quiet and working with Don. So obviously at some point they figured it out. Pete valued Don's talents, Don trusted Pete's discretion.
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[[folder: No 1961?!]]
* While I'm surprised this should've been a Headscratcher years ago, why was 1961 a missing year in the show? Was '61 not important as 1960 and 1962-70?
** EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, they planned regular {{Time Skip}}s at the outset but never skipped a full year again.
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[[folder: Attitudes towards Japan]]
Bert is clearly an aficionado of Japanese culture. Roger, on the other hand, ''really'' hates the Japanese (being ex-US Navy, he has never forgiven for them for the attack on Pearl Harbor) -- as seen by his reaction when the company pitches for the Honda account. Given that his partner's office is so conspicuously influenced by Japanese culture, how can he even stand to work with him?
* Maybe that's one of the reasons why he drinks so much.
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[[folder: Dick's pre-Don timeline]]
Much of the key points from his childhood are covered by the flashbacks - son of a whore, abusive stepmother, alcoholic father who was killed by a horse, lived in a brothel and lost his virginity to a whore. But we see nothing of him as a young man; there's a gap between 1944 (the date on Adam's photo of him and Dick) and 1950 (by which time he's in the Army in Korea). What was he doing for these six years? One would presume that he ran away from the brothel he called home as soon as he could, but where did he go? What did he do?
* Presumably he must have remained in contact with his family in some way, as Adam saw and recognised him on the train.
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[[folder: Don's post-Dick timeline]]
So Dick Whitman [[DeadPersonImpersonation takes the identity of his dead commanding officer]] in Korea, becoming Don Draper and getting repatriated with a Purple Heart as a result. Back in the States, he works as a salesman, first with used cars and later with fur coats, while attending night school to make up for his lack of a high school education [[note]] although why he would do this is in fact a headscratcher in itself, as surely the original Don would've had a high school diploma at the very least in order to be an officer, and as Don now has his identity he would also be able to use his educational qualifications[[/note]]. During this time he meets, marries and starts a family with Betty -- Sally being born in 1954 [[note]] it's her sixth birthday in the season one episode "Marriage of Figaro" which is set in 1960[[/note]]; plausible, if Dick/Don was sent home from Korea early on in the war (1950, say) and Betty got pregnant just after the wedding (which she herself confirms). At some point in the 1950s, Don tricks Roger into giving him a job at Sterling Cooper, where he excels. By 1960 (Season One), he's well-established at SC and is considered a major asset -- Director of Creative, no less. And yet...
* During one of his trysts with Joan in Season One, Roger implies that they've been having an affair for no more than a year. Yet in the flashback sequence in "Waldorf Stories" (S.4 E.6), we find that Roger first met Don when he went to buy a fur coat for his lover -- Joan. This would imply that, when the show starts, Don has been at Sterling Cooper for ''no more than a year'' -- despite him clearly being a senior figure at the company. How so?
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[[folder: Bob Benson]]
So ... much like Don, Bob has adopted an assumed identity to compensate for an impoverished past. He's apparently from a poor area of West Virginia, is probably using a false name and his resume is a pack of lies -- he didn't go to the college he claims to have attended, and he was actually the manservant of a vice-president at Brown Brothers Harriman (not an employee of the firm itself, as he had implied). Nevertheless, in Season Six, he wangles his way into SCDP as a junior account man and proceeds to get into Joan's good graces and (try to) do the same with Pete. Judging by his speaking fluent Spanish on the phone, he is presumably in league with Manolo with regards to Mrs Campbell.
* What exactly do they hope to get out of Mrs Campbell? While they're clearly not on the breadline, the Campbells have previously been stated to be an 'old money' family that's fallen on (relatively) hard times -- Pete's upper-class connections are the reason why he's so valuable to SC/SCDP/SC&P, but he still has to work in order to pay for the house in the suburbs and the apartment in Manhattan. Surely if Bob and Manolo are a pair of con-men preying on New York's richest, they'd aim a bit higher?
* Is his subtle advance on Pete -- subtle enough for him to be able to claim, should the need arise, that it must've been a misunderstanding -- genuine, or an attempt to deflect Pete's attention from the situation with Manolo and his mother? He must know, from accompanying Pete to a brothel if nothing else, that Pete is very much a heterosexual and so is most unlikely to be amenable to being hit on by a man.
** From his Spanish conversation, he evidently has a low opinion of Pete, so the come-on wasn't done out of genuine attraction.
** He probably does have homosexual tendencies, as evidenced by the conversation he has with Joan when he tries to get her to marry him, and also by his evident familiarity with gay brothels (as seen when he helps the GM executives out on their visit to New York). Doesn't mean to say that his come-on with Pete was genuine, though.
* How exactly is Duck able to find out all about him? The college details and his actual position at BBH I get (all that would take is a couple of phone calls to contacts willing and able to check the relevant paperwork), but how is he able to find out that he's using a false name and that he's actually from West Virginia? And didn't anyone at SCDP think to do any background research when they hired him, or rather after he turned up claiming to have been hired?
** Perhaps this is why he opted to ingratiate himself into SCDP -- a relatively small outfit with a somewhat high turnover of staff -- rather than one of the larger advertising agencies.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* In "Out of Town", how can Don remember the events surrounding his birth when he either wasn't there or was a newborn baby?
** I assume he was imagining it.
* Much is made of the fact that Don does not have a "contract". However, early in the series (at least two years before he meets Conrad Hilton, who forces the issue) Don is made a partner with 12.5% of the firm. The paperwork surrounding this share offering/grant is a de facto contract, regardless of anything else associated with Don's work.
** When Cooper offers Don the partnership, Don explicitly says "no contract" and Cooper assures him that he won't ask him to sign one. The share offering is more a financial transaction than anything else...Don's job at the agency remained essentially the same.
** The references throughout the series to "a contract" refer to a ''no compete'' contract, which is a specific type of contract that binds you to a specific firm for a set period. If you quit that firm -- even for something justifiable -- you can't work at any competitor for X number of years (The term of the contract), which means that you're functionally out of a job for that time period unless you go far enough away to not be in competition anymore or you take a job in a completely separate field. Since Sterling Cooper is a Big Deal with at least one nation-wide campaign they can argue that any ad agency anywhere in the US is a competitor, so anybody who they have on contract can't work in marketing anywhere else in the country for the rest of their term. Don's refusal to accept a contract is a power play, since if at any time he decides to leave SC he can get a job at another company and there's no way for them to stop him. Later, after Don was forced into signing a contract, this is why the key part of the whole crew leaving PPL to form SCDP was having Lane fire them all. Since being fired terminated all of their contracts they are allowed to compete, whereas if they had just quit they would have needed to sit at home and wait for their contracts to run out before they could start their new company.
* At the end of Season 3 the senior staff of Sterling Cooper take all of the documentation and physical artifacts from their accounts out of the office, effectively ''stealing their own company''. You really have to wonder if such a thing would be legal, or even possible.
** This may not be 100% accurate, but, seeing as Sterling-Cooper is a partnership and not a publicly traded company, the partners have every right to take any equipment and office supplies for themselves. They do own them, after all. This would be different in a publicly traded corporation, where all things belong to the company, not the investors.
** All the critical documentation would have been technically the property of the clients, meaning that so long as the staff had proof that the clients had requested to transfer their business from Sterling-Cooper to the fledgeling SCDP, and that Lane had authorized them to be in the building and take whatever supplies they needed for free, they'd have been in the clear from a legal standpoint. The only one in any real potential trouble would have been Lane, as PPL could have sued him for loss of earnings, but they probably didn't want the trouble of a cross-border lawsuit.
* It's incredible that none of Don's many partners ever came forward with a lovechild, or even a claim.
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