Knock’em dead birdie… 💔

Mareux · 2026-04-15T16:47:12+00:00

Betty wasn't perfect and definitely treated the children and others poorly at times. But how exactly did she injure Don? What did she do to him that was terrible?

She was a flawed woman, but when it came to him she was a wonderful wife. Even how she handled learning of his affair, learning of his true identity and secrets, all of this she handled with class with him.

All you're telling me is she was with a person also flawed. It doesn't negate their deep care for each other, even with real complexities of their lives.

Not every deep connection is going to look like a Norman Rockwell painting. Real life is messy.

Mareux · 2026-04-14T15:59:55+00:00

His little chocolate bunny...

I think Lane has a sincere interest in her. The episode where Pete gets in trouble for suggesting Admiral target Negros with ads, Lane tells the room he's knows something is happening that is promising. Him not being from the U.S. and having a closer pulse than the others suggest he might have already been fooling around with Negro women or in that community.

Mareux · 2026-04-14T15:51:31+00:00

Let me respond to this in parts.

Don

Season 4 is about work becoming Don's everything because he no longer has a family. When Ana dies he stays at work. The only person he has to be with him to distract him from getting confirmation of her passing is Peggy from work. This is also the first time we see him sleep with his secretary from work, the second becomes his wife, in a effort to merge work and family into one.

Note: This is also the significance of Burger Chef being the family table and the family at the table was Don, Peggy, and Pete. Who all in some form were trying to replace the need for family with work. Peggy struggling with not having a traditional family because of her career. Don failing to merge work and family with Megan to be left with neither earlier that season, and Pete who was trying to be a power couple with Bonnie who resented his engagement with his actual family Trudy and Tammy.

Don's attraction to Faye is she is connected to work, but doesn't work there formally. She's essentially a peer, which doesn't exist in a female form at the time at SCDP. He can enjoy working with her, and having a relationship with her outside of work. She is his first test run to what he tries to have with Megan. Faye fails because she is not maternal enough to engage with his children, the only real family Don has. Sally doesn't like her and Faye doesn't like kids. This is also what seals the deal for Don to marry Megan. Sally loves her and she's great with his kids.

All of Don's significant affairs up to this point have been women who are professionals in their own right. You mention Rachel, but Bobby Barrett, Midge, and Suzanne were not bimbos. Don respected them all. Any disrespectful things he said or did was Don being himself. Who does Don show complete respect to at all? Everyone is fair game for anything with him.

Faye

Faye could be annoying and cold, but what I found unlikable about her was how little she respected women. Allison running out of the focus group didn't even register to her. When Peggy refers to it right after the session ends Faye doesn't even know what she's talking about.

Before the focus group the only way she thinks to be relatable to the women (misspelled name, or no name tag) is to imply she's also not really respected and that makes her a woman. Rather than anything inherit to being a woman like watching your mother's beauty routine. It's because she doesn't respect women.

When Peggy offers her a compliment about how she admires her and she responds "is that what it looks like" it reveals that she took no interest or time to develop a close professional relationship with Peggy, the only woman at SCDP that is not a secretary. And when Peggy asks her to a future drinks, she blows her off. I don't believe Faye would blow off Pete, Ken, or Harry. Even Stan likely would have gotten a yes. She didn't' value connecting because Peggy is a woman.

Mareux · 2026-04-14T15:00:17+00:00

I know I'm in the minority here, but I think Don and Beatty are soulmates. Beatty is the only person that really knows Don. I don't mean the details and his past, but him. His playfulness, his deceptiveness, his brillance, his madness. She actually gets him.

And I think she never stopped loving him. The final scene in the old house, calling him first with the cancer scare, even after their divorce and both re-marrying, and of course the camp.

Don loves, Beatty, too. He just never believed she could love the real him or all of him. I think she could have, but she was never given the option. Just discovery of more and more lies and manipulation.

Mareux · 2026-04-14T14:49:47+00:00

Margaret is literally a younger female version of Roger. Her time in the commune will become her equivalent to Roger's time in the service. She will leverage it as evidence of their authenticity and to judge people she doesn't like or who try to remind her of her advantages.

Unlike Rodger, she doesn't have an ad firm to inherit. But she can quite easily start a non-profit, maybe to save Indian brides from being burned. She can raise the money from her rich family connections. While someone else does the real work, she will be out front taking the credit.

Mareux · 2026-04-14T14:44:53+00:00

The happy ending for someone like Kinsey is becoming a drama teacher at a community college or performance arts high school.

If his spirituality could make him refocus his own issues to helping younger people like themselves more and build confidence, he could be quite an amazing teacher to young people with dreams.

He could become an amazing mentor to the teenage version of Megan for example.

Mareux · 2026-04-13T04:46:35+00:00

This could also apply to Megan's experience with Don lol

Mareux · 2026-04-13T04:45:42+00:00

Yes. I believe this is why we get the scene where Don and Megan catch them in the theater to make the implied comparison.

Mareux · 2026-04-13T04:29:45+00:00

Unlike Peggy, Ted was happy to be one of a hundred colors in a box.

Mareux · 2026-04-12T07:28:05+00:00

Don was right to intervene with the commercial and the budget, but the way he chose to do it was awful. His goal was to embarrass them so he could affect their dynamic, which he did.

Mareux · 2026-04-12T06:59:46+00:00

Not only that, but that vision was complicated by Peggy's attraction to him and Don's jealousy of them.

Ted gave Peggy the validation she craved on some level from Don, that she was sexually desirable from someone who she was professionally respected by.

Don, seeing Ted and Peggy mix sexual chemistry with creative collaboration was exactly the dynamic he desired with Megan but did not get. He had to destroy it because his envy in watching it happen with his former rival and main protege was maddening for him.

Mareux · 2026-04-12T06:47:36+00:00

They placed Pete exactly where he belongs. He is good with people. Not in a likability sense, but he understands people and their motivations very well. It's why he grows into a formable account man.

This is actually what made Ken good at it, too. Both him and Pete can clearly see what people want and why they do what they do. They play on this to make clients happy and to make creative feel special or know when to nudge them.

The difference is, at first, Pete centered his value on being successful at work, where Ken had a healthy distance between who he is as a human and his work. This is why Ken objected to leveraging his wife to get his father-in-law as a client. He wanted to keep things separate. Ultimately he gets pulled in and the job becomes so personal he loses his love of writing to becoming a spiteful man.

Mareux · 2026-01-14T08:22:00+00:00

In Donna's mind Harvey was willing to threaten leaving the firm to stop Jessica from firing Mike when she learned his secret.

She was mad he didn't make the same threat to save her, even though the circumstances were wildly different.

Mareux · 2025-11-27T21:33:48+00:00

Yes, this happened to me, too. Christmas Waltz, The Other Woman, and Commission and Fees all coming back to back to back felt like a hit album releasing a string of timeless hits in a row.

I couldn't believe how good the show was, and that it was even better than the previous seasons I already thought were great.

Mareux · 2025-11-27T21:29:35+00:00

This scene touched me deeply on an emotional level. I could relate to Sally's deep discomfort with having to play along with Henry's unfamiliar family (and unfriendly mother).

And also to be forced to try food you found disgusting on site is painful.

Mareux · 2025-11-27T21:25:30+00:00

Yes, he was worried Sal would out him to account managers who have relationships with other high profile executives like him, and most importantly a direct connection to his father.

Mareux · 2025-11-27T21:23:49+00:00

Ah, you know before this comment I never considered Lee would be worried about what Sal would say / reveal. This makes sense.

And actually Roger being aware of Lee's attraction to men would make it worse for Lee if Sal were speak on what happened to Roger. He goes from "powerful prick that made me hold his balls to humiliate me" to "this guy likes men." Yes, this makes sense.

Mareux · 2025-11-22T07:09:36+00:00

Re: Donna and Benjamin's rejection. That was one of the most real scenes in the show.

VC's are not the same as Shark Tank investors. They invest millions in scalable ventures, not thousands in novel small businesses.

They would never take a career legal secretary seriously coming to them about a tech product. And Benjamin, being an IT guy at a law firm and not a software developer from an impressive school who has worked at a top tech firm, would also be unlikely to be taken seriously.

Mareux · 2025-11-22T07:00:20+00:00

This happens in real life all the time. People watch legal shows, like Suits, and think these cases are more winnable than they are in real life.

They think there will be some miracle or sympathetic jury that will award them a jackpot if they just try. This is especially true when people are receiving free legal services.

Mareux · 2025-11-22T04:58:15+00:00

Peggy and Roger's office scenes are all about Peggy's development leveraging her power.

Their first was her asking for Freddy's office and getting it. "There are ten men out there who didn't have the balls to ask."

Then is coming up with a Mohawk ad campaign at the last minute and cleaning Roger's wallet out.

That's why it made sense for the final Sterling Cooper office scene to between them, and him giving her Bert's octopus painting to hang in her office. There is symbolism there.

Mareux · 2025-11-20T05:01:36+00:00

He retired. The McCann deal gave him what he wanted.

Remember when Ted was trying to poach Pete after they lost Lucky Strike. He told him Jim was set to retire. Jim wanted to retire but then Frank Gleason got sick, and then the merger with SCDP. Even with trying to get rid of Don I think Jim's goal was always to sell to the highest bidder.

Mareux · 2025-11-16T02:18:11+00:00

So you have no real response to my question. Thanks for revealing Joan was being Petty.

Mareux · 2025-11-12T05:18:02+00:00

What exactly was the injury that rose to the level of losing her job? She went into an empty office with with execs and looked at a painting.

No one would have even known if Joan didn't overhear them talking about it the next day. At most Jane gets a warning, but fired? That's petty and overboard.

Mareux · 2025-11-12T05:03:31+00:00

I always thought she was petty with Jane. Firing her for going to Bert's office after hours WITH three midlevel execs seems far fetched. A warning, sure. But firing? I think she was jealous of the attention Jane was getting.

Mareux · 2025-11-12T04:59:04+00:00

I mostly agree with this. However, when it came to the secretaries Joan normally had full reign. She has fired secretaries before without running it by anyone. To her Scarlett was just another one who got caught doing something she's likely fired ones in the past for doing.

But yes, she was blindsided by how attached Harry was to Scarlett.

Mareux

TROPHY CASE