Why do we like don draper

Dreaming up jingles for soap flakes and spot remover. Telling yourself you're free […] you make the lie. You invent want. There is no system.

Here, his objectively valued status is clear. According to the authors' logic, viewing this rebellion as a deeper alternative to Don and his consumerism would be reductive. The lifestyle eschewed by Don infiltrated his domain: the ad world. Once myriad options for desirable social status arose, where did that leave our glistening, monolithic ideal of success? News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism.

Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. Don and Peggy. Betty, Joan, Peggy and Megan. Sally, Betty, Megan, and Don. Pete, Don and Roger. Peggy and Joan. Granted, motivated by fear and confusion in season one, he wanted to run away with Rachel Menken, which would have necessitated leaving his kids, likely with no way to reach him ever again.

You could make an argument that Don actually learned from that and learned how to give and take — not just dictate — in a relationship. And throughout the season, he solidified himself as a father. So, that question, again: Is Don Draper likable? Should viewers be rooting against him, feel conflicted about him as we do many people we love or merely be in the final stages of grief for a character they used to like?

I would contend that Matt Weiner is indeed asking us to feel some kind of affinity for Don. And from the start, I certainly have. He has no problem with the ladies. As for his faults, what is it that has haunted and driven him simultaneously? Certainly a need to be loved or at least wanted, even on the most base level. His marriage to Betty played out like the farm boy with no mother and mean parents was trying to paint over those memories with the perfect Grace Kelly wife, a house in the suburbs and two kids who could reap the benefits of a moneyed existence with a mother who doted on them.

In both Midge and Rachel, he was seeking independent, intelligent women, though we later learned with Faye that parity would never be an option if an independent, intelligent woman pushed him to do what he could never do — be himself, admit the albatross of his lie.

Don clearly has complicated issues with women. And yet, without Don there is no Mad Men. You are okay. All Don Draper wanted was to be happy. But all Don knew was how to create facsimiles of happiness — and so he never found a way to make it real for himself.

While Don spun his wheels, Pete threw tantrums, and Roger pickled himself to distraction, Peggy was busy getting shit done. Eventually she carved out her own place in the relentlessly misogynistic advertising industry, by sheer force of will and undeniably sharper instincts.

If she were around today, she might even deride affirmative action as an unnecessary act of pity that denigrates the value of hard work. But by the simple virtue of being a woman who pushed past a constant onslaught of sexist bullshit to get what she wanted, Peggy grew into a force that dared men to reckon with her brilliance, and smirked when she got the better of them.

Watching the first episode of Mad Men reveals exactly how little Mad Men knew — or even cared to know — about Joan Holloway. When someone pissed her off, her eyes flashed fury, foreshadowing the righteous wrath to come. Soon enough, it became impossible to ignore the fact that Joan was too smart to be satisfied with corralling lunch orders.

Her ambitions grew despite her more practical judgment, morphed to leap beyond the men in her life who disappointed and devastated her. If you only knew Joan from the pilot, the fact that the series ends with Joan offering Peggy a partnership in her own production company would be just as mind-boggling as it would be thrilling.

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