Some thoughts on the Enchantment Under the Sea Ball…

We got a lot of foreshadowing of Don and Megan’s relationship from Megan’s parents. Megan’s parents are both histrionic adulterers. They have loud, public fights and use sex to hurt each other. But it’s not too difficult to imagine that their relationship was very hot at one point. Megan’s mom seems like just the type to pull the “cleaning the house in my underwear to initiate angry make up sex” routine. And it’s not too difficult to imagine how the love between her and Emile died slowly as all the passion metastasized into barely sublimated contempt.

We’ve seen that Megan is also histrionic. Don is a very controlling guy and the problem with being a controlling guy is that you either end up with a passive dishrag like Betty, or a resistant adult child looking to be parented, like Megan.

Can there be any doubt that Betty would have sat at that HoJo’s until the moon landing if need be waiting for Don to return? Or that she would have just eaten the damn Sherbert to begin with?

It’s also clear from her exchange with her father that Megan has a strong Electra complex which suggests that the parallels between Don and Emile run pretty deep.

We see in Emile the Ghost of Don Draper’s Future. Emile was probably quite the intellectual in his heyday some 20 or 30 years prior, when Marxism was considered a perfectly viable political philosophy. Now in the mid 60s, he’s a relic.

Similarly, we are seeing Don’s mastery of the culture begin to fail him as he’s finding himself increasingly out of touch, in over his head and oblivious to what’s going on around him:

* He thought he’d be able to just walk into a Rolling Stones concert and sign Mick Jagger. It might not be totally insane to suggest that the Stones would do a commercial, but surely there’s no hope of pitching them at a concert.

* His wife passive-aggressively speaks French to her mother (even if your mom is speaking French to you, you can always answer in English.)

* And the ultimate Draper Fail…he gets sold on the Cancer Society banquet based on an appeal to his ego only to find out that there isn’t a nickel of business in it for him. Just like Pete sold Emile with his Jedi Ad Man Mind Trick.

As Don’s grip on the culture fails him, he will become increasingly controlling and the conflicts with Megan will escalate. She won’t do much to slow that train down because this is precisely the fight she wants to have (or have again) with her father.

Just as Peggy used “I do” as a double-entendre for dinner and matrimony, so too did Megan use “not tonight” as a double-entendre. She literally meant that she didn’t want to fight with her father about her career, but she used a phrase that married people use to postpone sex. This equates conflict and sex in Megan’s mind.

Like her mother, Megan has married an older man who she found attractive because of his intellectual prowess and his mastery of his profession. As Don’s star begins to fade, Megan will likely respond the way her mother has.

As for how Don will respond to that, well, after their last bout of Kung Fu Fight-ing, let’s just say that Don shouldn’t sign the Draper family up for any winter caretaker jobs in Colorado. Heeeeere’s Donny!

Love the cast as always,
-Jason from NatterCast
nattercast.blogspot.com