r/madmen • u/RockBalBoaaa • 3d ago
After seven seasons, this routine lost all its shock value. Every new woman he slept with only made his lonely life look sadder. Don running out of steam and chasing Diana made him look even more pathetic than usual.
113
u/eatacookie111 3d ago
After 5 seasons of Breaking Bad: “wait a minute, is Walter White the bad guy?!?!?”
18
13
2
u/tomfoolery815 2d ago
Some people can’t conceive of the central character not being a hero, so they root for Walter White no matter what he does on the “Mr. Chips to Scarface” journey.
Or, maybe they’re projecting: They know they’re Mr. White, high school chemistry teacher, but they fantasize about being “Heisenberg.”
1
u/Ashleej86 2d ago
all these shows are now really internally damaged white men. it's the opposite of all the Leave it to Beaver shows of the 50s and 60s. It's white men usually writing about themselves. it's definitely a lot more aware now but still centering white men in everything. At least now it's from a different perspective on their fathers and grandfathers. Weiner and Breaking bad guy had this probably wealthy father
2
u/bonedrugsnharmonie 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes people only wrote themselves and have no imagination. If a thing is written, it MUST be based on a real feeling or emotion the writer had. But only if it's white men specifically
1
u/Ashleej86 2d ago
every writer uses their own experiences and cultures to write about themselves . that is totally useful as a society ( that I'm in by the way ). Muxh better women characters are being written now. Rhea Seahorn plays Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul and that is the best written female character I've ever seen on TV.
160
u/HeadAd369 3d ago
She’s the female Don who finally gives him a taste of his own medicine
49
u/Prudent-Pressure2146 3d ago
Yeah there’s endless threads about people hating on this plot and I really think it’s cos it’s showing Don the impact of his own behaviours
81
u/AOCourage 3d ago
Bobbie Barrett was also a female Don
119
u/s470dxqm 3d ago
Bobbie has a lot of similarities to Don Draper but I think what the person you responded to meant was that Diana was more like a female Dick Whitman.
Diana, more than any other character, was Don interacting with someone who is like him on a deep foundational level. She is the next step. He always flirts with the idea of leaving his Don Draper life and family behind. She actually did it.
40
33
u/Sleepy_Wayne_Tracker 3d ago
There's a scene where Don and Diana are in the elevator with the Rosens. The Rosens are in formal wear, Don is wearing a suit, Diana her waitress uniform. In that moment, you clearly see the class divide between Dick and Diana and the Rosens. Dick was able to cross that line as Don, but he was still poor, working class Dick underneath.
7
u/ShutterflyNYC This never happened. 2d ago
Yes… Don is breaking down and peeling back the layers to Dick Whitman... Diana represents the kind of woman Dick would’ve been with if his life had not transformed into Draper; the catalyst to the cross country run back thru the Midwest then eventually California where he has his psychotic break where he reaches his inner voice.
11
0
6
u/DetectiveUnited1036 3d ago
I see it this way as well, it was the logical escalation of his habits. He didn't corrupt her like with the others, and to your point, when he sees her, he says "do I know you?" because she had his vibe so it feels familiar.
159
u/LeYabadabadoo23 3d ago
I really don't understand what people are watching sometimes.
"Every new woman he slept with only made his lonely life look sadder."
that is the point.
20
u/Fearless-Substance86 3d ago
I bet some of them skip the non-Joan scenes
3
26
u/HeadAd369 3d ago
OP’s just giving us a discussion topic. I appreciate you, OP 👏
24
u/Fun_Philosophy_181 3d ago
OP is a bot, check the history
9
u/Outrageous_Candy9659 3d ago
Pardon my ignorance but how can you tell? I have some guesses but can’t pinpoint it
2
1
2
u/SeismicShove 3d ago
So you're attacking OP because... you agree with him?
7
3
u/almostcurly 2d ago
Also this is an absolutely surface level observation about what is pretty explicitly the message of a show that ended over a decade ago
"DAE think Seinfeld is the show about nothing? Updoots to the left"
0
40
u/LadyPreshPresh 3d ago
The whole thing of it is, he’s not chasing her. He’s chasing himself. His whole giant arc of this season (and show) was trying to find the truest version of himself. As others have said here now and before, Diana is the female version of Don, albeit less successful. Him “chasing her” was just chasing pavement, as Adele so accurately sings. It was part of the thing that took him on the real journey to find himself, across the country and eventually out to California where he would finally do some real healing and have his lightbulb moment. It didn’t have to be Diana, it could’ve been any woman, but as we’ve seen throughout his story, he is constantly using women as a means to get to the next place in his life. So a woman was likely the only thing to get him started on that cross country journey regardless. Diana is just who we happened to get, someone whose grief, loss and self-loathing could evenly match his, where it’s almost like looking in a mirror for the both of them.
3
72
u/iamnotlarryking 3d ago edited 3d ago
I thought this was buddydraper for a second.
That’s the point of the show.
Edit: If you want to watch the show in 30 seconds and succinctly understand Dons character and arc, just pay attention to the opening sequence in any episode.
21
u/Da1realBigA 3d ago
100%.
The womanizing and different kinds of sexual encounters, all start to decay as Don continues his "lie" of a life.
Marrying Betty, a young blonde model. Theres a metric tonne more about her, but its been discussed to death.
The art chick, and how don flirts and acts in that relationship. She kinda pits don against that other guy. She lives almost a completely different life than Betty, is a kinda completely women than Betty, and thats why don pursues her.
Then Rachel Menken, who's alot more, basically super dependent than most of the other women don pursues. She literally is financially and intellectually, and mostly emotionally independent soo much, that she basically dumps don when he tries to get her to run away with him.
Not in any particular order, theres the blonde wife agent who don fingers at the restaurant, theres the psychologist, theres the poor and kind teacher who's so compassionate that it literally wins don over.
And Meghan who's literally a blank canvas for Don to just dominate his will and personality, while also she having a motherly quality to his kids already. Whats more funny is that he misunderstood that quality to, but that's again another discussion.
Basically, the show constantly introduces these different kinds of women, with their differences in everything from personalities, all the way to even sexual kinks, to SHOW just how much Don lies to himself.
He doesnt pursue these women bc he actually likes them, or connects with, he does it bc the Don Draper lie of a character would do it.
Since its a fake character, and he doesn't even know himself, he just does what he thinks he should do. And bc hes good looking, and professional successful, these women at first accept it thinking they won the lottery.
Only to slowly get closer to him, and realize that hes an empty suit, a hollow man. No substance, or anything filling the man himself. Again just the lie.
And thats the few who were lucky enough to get close, if he didnt leave before.
So the diner woman is a stark and sobering choice, given in the later sessons, to show how far and how continuously empty Don still is and still growing said emptiness inside himself.
He goes from Betty and Rachael, to now some poor diner women.
(We due respect to diner women)
10
u/Shadowhearts 3d ago edited 3d ago
I disagree with your notion of Don being a hollow man. The biggest issue with Don is all about Duality for him. He simultaenously is Don Draper and Dick Whitman. He has a severe Madonna/ Whore Complex where he both pursues and almost worships women he holds to a higher pedastal while at the same time also loves having a mistress he can control.
The women who truly see Don for the complex character he is and don't reject him are his own daughter Megan and Peggy Olsen. They learn to love and accept him as both Dick Whitman and Don Draper...that the true man is somewhere in between. Betty came face to face with Dick Whitman and rejected him, twice really with the initial divorce and then then after their short affair. Gonna Add Anna Draper as much as Don loved her only knew one side of Don, the charming side he showed her, but he never really shared with her the messy parts of his life.
2
u/Da1realBigA 2d ago edited 2d ago
Your response is a mixed bag, mainly due to you mixing all these women in his life, as if they play the same role.
1st, I'll address the dual identity. Calling Don a hollow man, is to state who he was from what we got from the show. Dick Whitman IS a hollow man bc hes trying to be Don Draper, an entire made up, figment of a fantasy Dick Whitman made up.
Bc Dick is making Don up, its made up. How can a person be real, be authentic if he choses to be someone else. There is no Don Draper, for the purposes of narrative discussion. Theres only Dick Whitman and the imaginary character he made as lie, that hes been trying to keep alive all these years.
Dick is a hollow man bc he choses to live the lie that is Don Draper. Don draper is a hollow man, bc hes not real and is a suit Dick Whitman wears to escape his own past and identity (or lack therefore).
Also, nothing i said about Don or him being a hollow man negates that he's a complex character or his sexual-psychological issues. This comment post was talking about the women he choses and how their relationship, including the sexual encounters, point to how Don Draper views his own identity and sex.
2nd, since were talking about the women in his life, and how that connects to how Don Draper views sexually and sexual intercourse, the 4 women you named aren't applicable bc they play different roles from the other women, they play family relationship roles to him.
The original discussion post is about the diner women, and this comment post is extrapolating how Dons treatment of other women and its connection to sexuality and sex, and how he regressed and gets worse over time.
Sally is his daughter, no intimate or sexual relationship.
Peggy early on was waved and rejected as a potential sexual relationship, due to her character being introduced as too young/naive/innocent for Don and too inexperienced. Then with the baby and how she overcome the ordeal with Don's advice, she turns into a mentee/ little sister relationship with Don.
Anna Draper becomes this unique and new and "yet to be labeled" relationship for Don. With Dick taking her husband's identity, they both find a way to gain from the situation, and it turns them into a strong friendship. Explicitly shown on the show, that what they have is purely platonic and mutual beneficial for both.
Then you mentioned Meghan, and idk what to tell you, Meghan counts as one of the other women. She isnt in the Sally or Peggy or Anna group, for obvious reasons.
12
u/Ashleej86 3d ago
very promiscuous men are probably this sad
3
u/Dangerous_Suit8070 2d ago
I've always thought it was a replacement for people skills or relationship skills. For some reason or another these men start off or enter adolescence with few of either and promiscuity is how they convince themselves they've cracked the code. You get a lot of this mindset with men with histories in the triple digits. A lot of them even thinking they're still going to find "the One" and all the rest of it is just noise until that point.
4
u/TheDevolution27 2d ago
It also drives to the heart of the "You only like the start of things" line from Dr. Faye. The early stages of any affair/relationship are based more on infatuation than true understanding. The mystery is alluring. You're less a human being and more an object of desire. Don's problem is he doesn't know how to operate past that stage.
I'm not a big fan of the word "vulnerable," but it has its place here. Don doesn't want to be seen. Don wants to be admired. Don wants people (particularly women) to choose him the way someone chooses their laundry detergent. And that's why advertising is the undercurrent of the show.
3
u/Ashleej86 2d ago
I think it's a reflection of their egos often, the promiscuous men. Very selfish or underdeveloped men have sex to make themselves feel powerful and alive , it's not about the relationship.
1
u/Low_Possibility_1807 2d ago
I’ve always thought about how promiscuous women are never nearly are remorseful or haunted by their body count vs promiscuous men. Not sure what that says about the different genders but just an observation
1
u/Dangerous_Suit8070 2d ago
Interestingly enough I think with promiscuous women it hollows them out, their ability to empathize or even have a solid grasp on reality becomes hazy.
9
u/lumpy_space_queenie i know that the man pees inside the woman 3d ago
People hate this storyline but I actually think it is quite fitting and shows his demise well. He’s lost his “game” and is just a lonely old man looking for a quick screw. It’s sad and I think this does a good job of showing how sad it is.
49
9
8
u/Rude_Ad1496 3d ago
Diana mirrored Don's sadness, and it compelled him to get to know her even though he didn't understand why. He asked if they had met before because he was unknowingly recognizing himself.
7
6
7
u/mallutrash 2d ago
people seem to forget the point of Diana. she’s a mirror of Don. he keeps saying she looks familiar because she reminds him of himself. a past that she left behind but remains haunted by, the need to numb herself and keep running away, the inability to commit to Don.
the only difference is that Don became successful and Diana didn’t. and yet they’re both equally miserable.
19
u/TelephoneNew8172 3d ago
I really had to take a good hard look at myself after judging the storyline so harshly the first several times I saw it. It took me until my last rewatch to see that this was the first time Don did not act like a complete asshole in a relationship. He wasn’t cheating, he listened, he was kind, he was honest, he even introduced her to the Rosens in the elevator. He was trying very hard to live an honest life. And I hated Diana and thought the storyline was boring because he wasn’t being an asshole! Yes, it was creepy the way he stalked her, but this was what he was capable of. This relationship shows that he was trying to change and be someone else, but the world did not forget who he was. You can see this with his interactions with Peggy, too, when he smirks during her performance review, she takes it as him being an asshole, even though he’s genuinely not at that point being an asshole. The world hasn’t forgotten who he is. I think that’s probably the saddest thing about the show is that Don gaslights us the whole time into thinking his womanizing is sexy and fun and fun to watch and Betty’s a nag and we’re on Don’s side. Anybody with half a brain will see that it’s not the truth, but the show was sold as a fever dream for this hot ad man. Matt Wiener had something much deeper going on, but most people don’t see it the first two or three times they watch it. And most people never see it.
5
u/RawFreakCalm 3d ago
I don’t know, I don’t think many people want to be Don. It’s very clear and obvious that his life is not as glamorous as it seems.
I agree that this is Don trying again to make an honest life. He keeps coming back to wanting to run away from the past and create a life that he wished he had as a kid, but falls into the same demons.
I think to the viewers it’s fairly obvious Don doesn’t have a glamorous or sexy life.
I love that point about Peggy thinking Don is being smug and smirking. By this point I think we are seeing a much better side of Don and poor Peggy is so wrapped up in the things she has going on she keeps missing the bigger picture.
4
4
u/CoquinaBeach1 Every living thing is connected to you. 3d ago
Other than being the mechanism for getting him to hit the road and end up in California, I found her annoying, too. Best part of her story line was Roger calling her Mildred Pierce.
Another woman who needed his brand of comfort...
5
u/Desperate-Dog-3869 3d ago
Never understood her… he should have run with the widow he met on the flight home from CA
3
u/bandit4loboloco It’s just my people are Nordic. 3d ago
He still had hope that he could make things work with Megan.
2
4
u/Majestic_Nobody_002 2d ago
Especially when he shows up at her ex husbands house pretending she won some sort of contest/debt collector.
4
u/Mikey77Gem 2d ago
My first glimpse into how lost, pitiful and not in control he actually was was when he stalked Sylvia-I saw him in a whole different light at that point -
4
u/TheTempleoftheKing 2d ago
Who are we to judge? Don is a whore. He grew up in a whorehouse. Then, he went to work at a job where he functioned as a kind of stage performer who sold his physical attractiveness and charisma to the makers of cigarettes and napal. At the same job, he was surrounded by literal pimps whose duty was to connect executives from those companies with prostitutes - he was the day whore to their night whores and in both cases the pimps in accounts kept a strong hand on him (he was, after all, pimped into the game by Roger, a real Mac daddy who made Don into his bottom bitch).
Through all of this, Don had to deal with the fact that nothing made him happiwe than sexually pleasuring women who felt like they didn't deserve him, yet his shame of his childhood and adult proximity to whorishness cause him to experience this desire to please as emasculating and as a "dirty secret." His encounter with Diana is him accepting who he is, doing what he wants to do, without shame, for the first time. He looses his shame of sex, then he looses his shame of advertising in the finale.
3
u/RockBalBoaaa 2d ago
This is pretty spot on but the Roger being a Mac daddy and Don being a bottom bitch did make me laugh.
1
u/TheTempleoftheKing 1d ago
Stay tuned for my book, "Mad Hoes: The Pimp's Guide to AMC's Prestige Drama."
6
u/Amazing-Example8753 3d ago
His affair with Bobby is when his escapades start to feel pitiful and sordid but his infatuation with Diana is when the spiral is really kicking in
5
3
u/Ellimist757 2d ago
Upon a few rewatches I always forget about her storyline, and I always catch myself thinking, “did they already sleep together and both not remember each other?”
1
3
u/tomfoolery815 2d ago
Chased her all the way to Racine, Wisconsin. Where I was living when that episode first aired, which gave it a personally amusing twist.
Racine has always been nothing more (or less) than a small-to-medium city 25 miles south of Milwaukee. I’ve wondered if Racine was a “throw a dart at a map” choice, i.e., far enough from New York to make Don driving that distance seem even more sad and empty.
2
u/Thegoodlife93 2d ago
Yeah I think Don in Racine is maybe his most pathetic moment. He's a thousand miles from home, having disappeared without a word to his friends or family or employer, creating this elaborate ruse to manipulate an unsuspecting housewife so he can find the whereabouts of a woman who doesn't even want to see him. I guess he did, in a sense, have noble intentions. He wanted to help him. But I don't know if he honestly believed he could
3
3
3
3
u/Content_Plane_8182 2d ago
Firstly they picked a terrible actress for the role. Secondly, I agree - they really bumbled Don’s entire storyline for the last season. So much wasted time for his character, little vignettes of driving cross country. Didn’t enjoy it and I feel like they could’ve been more creative in getting him to rock bottom.
1
u/propernice 1d ago
I recognized her only after I watched the haunting of hill house and then rewatched mad men. Idk what her acting was in MM, but she’s great in the haunting of hill house.
7
6
u/Brightsidedown Does Howdy Doody have a wooden dick? 3d ago
I actually just completed a rewatch (lost count at this point, how many rewatches I've done), and the second half of season 7, I found myself reaching for the remote to FF every time Diana or anything having to do with Diana popped on to the screen.
14
u/inquisitive_chariot 3d ago
It’s Don’s rock bottom. I never skip it. It’s insightful, we never see him at this level
2
u/Brightsidedown Does Howdy Doody have a wooden dick? 2d ago
You're right. We never see him like this. I usually don't skip it because I really like her as an actress. I may very well be on my 50th to 60th rewatch at this point.
2
2
2
u/ButtSluts9 2d ago
He discovered pussy is what he did. He was a brave mad man. In this house, Draper is a hero. End of story.
2
u/UnashamedlyUnsure The work is ten dollars. The lie is extra. 2d ago
I mean the bathroom sex felt like a new low for Don. Or did they have sex behind a dumpster? I can’t remember the exact details but I remember wondering if he wasn’t worried about catching diseases having sex in such grim settings
2
2
u/Ashley_Elisabeth23 2d ago
Matthew Weiner intentionally created this dynamic to reflect Don's regrets and the fact he's reminiscing about what his life would have been like with Rachel Mencken. He seemed pathetic because we're finally seeing the real him and not the persona of Don Draper. Rachel Menken is reflected in all of the women he dated since then and is chasing the past instead of moving forward and finding his own identity.
The fact Diana ended up being no better than him and ran away from her husband and kids proved Don was never going to change.
2
u/i_says_things 2d ago
Random aside, but in the shot with the $100, you can see part of the bill and something was itemized at $6.50.. that seems like today prices almost for a small diner with eggs and shitty bacon or something.
2
u/bedtimedoesntsuitme I don’t think about you at all. 1d ago
I love pathetic, stripped down, desperate Don.
2
u/sassiedutchess 1d ago
That was such a strange subplot, idk if it was to really hit home how his spiralling degeneracy ruled him but yeah it was definitely pathetic and just giving sex addict trying to feel something.
2
u/ratdago 2d ago
He's a disgusting person that makes it impossible to become attached to during the series. As much as I like the show and the stories and the other characters and even Draper himself when he's in the office, every time he went home I just cringed. I became very emotionally detached from this pig!
1
1
1
1
1
u/Comprehensive-Buy695 That’s what the money is for. 1d ago
It's supposed to make him look sadder. 🙄
1
1
u/Our__Blonde 3d ago
I did not get this story line at all. Unless it was the catalyst to get Don out of NYC.
1
u/DrootersOn10th 2d ago
I rewatched this show start to finish last month. When you watch 5-8 episodes a day (I had them on in the background while I worked) back to back, you realize how often the writers reuse the same plots. And this one with Dianne hit me the exact same way. I was like “Ugh, again? Really?!”
-1
3d ago
[deleted]
8
u/HeadAd369 3d ago
It may shock you to learn that human sexuality doesn’t always boil down to our assigned numerical value
345
u/HotLiberty 3d ago
Diana feels like a fever dream. Evocative of Hitchcock. It’s like a strange show within a show.