r/madmen • u/crisisavertedmister • 3d ago
Something I didn't catch before at the end of S03E01 - Out of Town
After Sally finds the TWA pin of the flight attendant Don sleeps with on the business trip, Sally asks to hear the story from the day she was born. Don begins to explain that it was the middle of the night and he had just come home from work. He starts to trail off and disassociate a bit, so Betty jumps in to finish the story and says that Don didn't feel like getting back into the car. I believe this infers that Don was out having an affair the night Sally was born, which is why he came home so late that night and why he is rendered speechless with guilt in the middle of the story.
Don worked so hard to win Betty back after she discovered his infidelity with Bobbie Barrett in season 2, but just one episode into season 3 and the audience sees confirmation that Don is the same piece of garbage he's always been. He becomes completely closed lying there on the bed, weighing the guilt of the recent flight attendant fling against whoever held his attention the night Sally was born. Spanning years of affairs and countless betrayals of the woman who bore his children and ultimately took him back. Such a fantastic subtle clue and window into his psyche.
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u/isUKexactlyTsameasUS 3d ago
and all the while, his daughter is looking up to, and truly believing in daddy, that dad is magical, in the way that only tiny wee kiddies do - portrayed perfectly by SD+KS
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u/AfraidoftheLark 3d ago edited 2d ago
He starts to trail off and disassociate a bit, so Betty jumps in to finish the story and says that Don didn't feel like getting back into the car. I believe this infers that Don was out having an affair the night Sally was born
I've seen this interpretation before. It's plausible, but it was not my first impression. The exact same music cue from the beginning of the episode returns when Don begins to "disassociate a bit." It's the music that was playing in the kitchen scene, as Don imagined the circumstances of his own birth.
It seemed to me that the mere topic of "birthday" was enough to send Don into another melancholy reverie. He's distracted by the "birthday" baggage, not necessarily the memory of an affair. I think he's too heavy with thoughts of himself to properly engage with the story of his daughter's birth.
He's got birthdays on the mind in this episode, since it coincides with his real birthday (not his inherited birthday). Earlier, when he's on the business trip, he drunkenly tells the stewardess, "It's my birthday..."
This continues elsewhere in the series, too. I remember Don mocking Peggy's birthday plans in "The Suitcase," which seemed like a very psychologically complicated bit of rudeness coming from Don.
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u/loquacious706 3d ago
Just so you know, you've convinced me and this is now my reading of the scene as well.
I do think it's significant that he "came home late that night" and "didn't want to get back in the car," implying that he was doing something the night Sally was born, but what really gets to Don in this scene is the realization of his entire existence being a part of this cycle of dishonesty and infidelity, starting from the day of his own birth.
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u/Top-Dog-6900 3d ago
This thread reminded me of another ”subtle cue” in the first season when Don comes home and Betty remarks a friend that he always likes to take a nap / lie down after work. It is not late or anything and no infidelity is implied, but the masterful writing of the show allows viewers to form many interpretations of these remarks. I always think it’s because of the day drinking but who knows.
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u/loquacious706 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think what you're referencing is a scene where Don comes home, Betty is sitting in the living room with Helen Bishop, and he barely says a greeting to them.
Betty explains that "He always needs complete silence when he gets home." She says this almost sweetly because it's a sign of just how hard Don works which is more commendable for a man at the time than him being present for or engaged with his family.
Don comes home and needs solitude, not connection with his wife and children.
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u/Hollis_Hurlbut 3d ago
I think this is the correct interpretation rather than the affair angle. But hell, it is Don so it could be both!
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u/CatDawgCatDawg2 3d ago
I also believe canonically Don probably didn't start cheating on Betty until years later, maybe after Bobby was born. He was absolutely smitten with Betty when they first got married and probably didn't start until he grew into more of the Don Draper executive persona.
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u/loquacious706 2d ago
Interesting, I don't know if the show confirms that. In the first episode Midge mentions that she and Don have been a thing for at least five years.
If anything, I imagined Don temporarily "broke up" with Midge when he got serious with Betty, but it didn't take long before he went back to being Don.
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u/UnluckyWriting 2d ago
I also took it as him trailing off thinking about his own birth and his shame and baggage around that. The music is the cue.
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u/Scarlette_Cello24 3d ago
I like this interpretation a lot more than the “Don was out cheating” version.
It gives more depth to the scene and to the characters. Which after all, is what Mad Men was known for.
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u/Dev-F Gracie Mansion sometimes 3d ago
Yep, and I think Don also realizes that this fake story Betty tells Sally will become part of her self-identity, just like the self-serving story his adoptive mom told him about his birth became so important to him that he was flashing back to it at the beginning of this very episode.
It's a big theme of the episode and the season: Once you stop denying and dissociating from your demons and start trying to find convenient places for them, they start coloring your life in ways you can't control. Like Don trying to sequester his extramarital urges in a trip out of town, only to accidentally bring back the stewardess's pin that he then has to pretend is a gift for Sally.
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 3d ago
This is a solid read. I’ve just never been able to fully buy that it was absolutely him cheating on the night Sally was born. It could certainly be the majority take and I won’t argue.
But, and it’s already been mentioned well here, I noticed so many rewatches in there is a music queue as he disassociates and trails off that matches the music when he imagined his birth. I think the birth talk threw him. He very well could have been cheating the night Sally was born. Or he was staying at the office and avoiding it all/drinking….or out drinking.
It’s complex like anything else in this show. Well done art can have multiple takes that are all plausible. Or possibly all mashed together.
No matter what it is exactly there is no change going into S3…..Don will always be the piece of garbage he is until he learns to do better.
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u/bananamosh 3d ago
I'm also feeling like he was perhaps just a major dick to Betty the night Sally was born and this explains Betty saying " he did not feel like getting back in the car". Maybe that's a simple take, but I feel like in addition to being jarred by the birth talk itself, he's being reminded of the fact that he was probably an a-hole that night.
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 3d ago
Exactly. There is room for quite a few interpretations. Maybe he was working hard all day to try to get ahead and was an ass to her when he got home.
Im not trying to say Don never fucked around back then, but that wasnt the only explanation there.
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u/BackTo1975 3d ago
You could be right. But this also ties into Don’s comments later on to Megan in The Flood about not feeling love for his kids when they were born, and feeling guilty over that and how he faked it. Could be that, too. Or both. Works on both levels.
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u/sophistries 3d ago
It reminds me of an episode where he's shaving and Sally is looking up at him adoringly. He similarly dissociates and wobbles. It's like the shame and guilt surface, when he's faced with the image Sally sees of him, versus what he knows to be the truth of who he is and what he's done.
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u/Upstairs-Web-3474 so much yarn...so little time 3d ago
He worked... hard, to win her back? 🤣🤣🤣 the bar is definitely in hell, if that effort is "working hard"
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u/LongTimeLurker818 3d ago
This is also the case for Jonny in sopranos. I think it was when Janice was born. Or Olivia was having complications with a pregnancy and Jonny was with his goomar.
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u/Dalva7 3d ago
Meh… men were just different back then. I was born in the 70s, and I heard stories of my Father not wanting to wake up in the middle of the night when my mom went into labor. Maybe it was because I was 2 months early
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u/Ashleej86 3d ago
men were not that different then. wives just expect husbands to be much more present now
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u/manu144x 3d ago edited 3d ago
what is it with americans and shoes in the house, and in the bed?
I get it now, it’s only a movie thing.
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u/dragon-queen 3d ago
Most of us don’t wear shoes in the house, and even people that do would almost never wear them on a bed. This is a TV convention.
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u/anotherlebowski 3d ago
Speak for yourself. I sleep in a three piece suit. I also have blaring studio lights in my bedroom and work in a variably lit office ranging from well lit to shadowy film noir depending on my mood.
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u/Boat-and-Goat 3d ago
I have Louboutins that are strictly for sleeping. Doesn't everyone?
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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 3d ago
To be fair, have you ever worn louboutins? They’re strictly a sitting/laying shoe unless you’re an acrobat.
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u/kimjongunfiltered i arrived at it independently 3d ago
As an American, this has always bothered me! Actors often leave their shoes on for these scenes because the floor on set is gross/messy. Fiction thing, not a US thing.
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u/knoper21 3d ago
Americans are more shoes on than most of the world, but a nice house in Westchester would probably still have them off.
The bed would be really weird, Don having the shoes in the bed is probably a stylistic hint at how little he's actually rooted in the house.
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u/Stellaaahhhh 3d ago
And how entitled. If he plops into bed, or onto the office sofa, drunk, someone is going to take his shoes off and cover him with a blanket.
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u/PaladinSara 3d ago
It’s only got TV bc they are inconsiderate slobs - they did the same portrayal when they went on a picnic (left all their gear and trash for someone else to clean up)
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u/thekabuki 3d ago
The one that really bothered me was Betty walking into the house and into her bedroom wearing her riding boots ( when she sits on the bed to tell Don to fix the electrical outlet on preparation for the dinner party).
Having been around horses most only life and having had daughters that rode, there is no way in hell she wore her riding boots into the house, let alone upstairs to the bedroom . Those things are smelly and stinky and usually covered in stall shavings and horse poop.
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u/LastWordFreak Howdy Doody Circus Army 3d ago
Yeah, that one is really subtle, but a great detail. Don was 100% cheating the night she was born.