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Mad Men: EST, aka Even Suckers Transform

Started by tomwatson · 9 months ago

When we last saw Don, he was in the glow of sunlight through the window of DC8 on his way to Los Angeles to get away from his domestic travails. It’s the primal tactic of flight when fight doesn’t work. Good old running away. After the week we have witnessed, we should all be so ... Continue reading »

57 comments

  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    The grifters are right out of Criminal Intent territory.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    The Viscount is a phony, look at him slithering away as Pete taps the Blue Blood index...
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  • Peter

    9 months ago

    Actually Werner based much of his EST seminars on the notions of Reality Therapy and The Nature of the Way That Human Beings BE in their lives, also known as Ontology of Being. In any event the key conversation of EST was how does each individual person and people in general distinguish - if they do at all - between their thoughts about what is real and what is actually in fact real. What the EST seminar points out and what most of the participants get/got was that people often have a big gap between what they think is real and what is actually real. Most of us live many delusions. A key notion is that there is power available in one's life if one can get the gap and see new possibilities for how one is being in their life. Of course one can always choose to be shallow - if for example a person gets that they are being shallow in some area of their life, it's up to us to choose. The EST seminar at best enabled people to get the potentially transformative distinction mentioned above and to choose freely and after consideration whether or not to choose to live and be in life in ways that enable or empower the transformed way that that person sees for themselves and others. This of course doesn't mean that others will get it or that it's easy to communicate, but that's the usual morass of life.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    Every time I try to wade into this topic I wind up giving myself a self-inflicted psychic wound. Mike Nichols had me right on sight with his nightclub patter: "Way down deep inside...you're shallow."
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  • David Ehrenstein

    9 months ago

    I don't think Don has an identity at all. He is "The Man Without Qualities" personified. He can be a successful businessman and a good husband while being a slick operater and neurotic pussyhound at the same time. Neurosis is the key. Tony Sopranao was a psychotic. I don't think there's any danger of Don actually killing anyone -- though a trace of Tom Ripley does waft through the air about him.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    David, I think that's exactly right - but I also think it's the structural problem with Mad Men.

    Don's a good-looking blank canvas that the writers put different demands on week to week. And when they get lazy, they just cut and paste: "Draper stares wistfully into middle distance as if considering the meaning of life." Perhaps it's purposeful, but they've created in Don Draper an empty emotional void at the center of the series.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Peter, that's a very clear description of the underlying workings of EST (and now the Landmark Forum). Thanks. Of course they came into existence after Don's time, although similar ideas were around. Part of what is compelling about Don Draper as a tv character is his unique issues about is identity, who he is even to himself.

    David, the reference to Ripley is dead on, even, as you say, without actual homicide. I wonder if Weiner is going to resolve Don's identity crisis at the end of the series. That too, would be unique on tv.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Roger---thinking. Yea. That's what he does best.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Where is Kurt from??
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    See, Roger is shallow - but he's also interesting. There's something going on there - a "man without qualities" worth plumbing to see the emptiness. He's a character. "Don" doesn't have those qualities - or lack of qualities, in my view. Maybe it's the lack of consistency.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Don wearing his hat outside in LA--what a riot. He really is confused.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Yeah, and now he's Mr. Business - after not caring for so long. I don't get it.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Jesus, they gave Don Draper 12.5% - what a buncha dopes. S&C is headed for the rocks.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Don is very good looking, but the number of women who throw themselves at him is pretty crazy. Whose fantasy is this show? He's quite an alter ego for Matt Weiner.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    That and his existential crisis always puts him into bed with a gorgeous women. Like Bond via Camus.

    Silly and slight.
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    Well, they are European girls, mostly [/sarcasm].
    reply
  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    The first wave of Eurotrash has landed!
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    Hi everyone...recovering from a long weekend trip to Austin so I'm a little late to the party. Thanks, Tom, for the additional Twitter reminder.
    reply
  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    The white-haired Euro dude looks like a cross between Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Christopher Guest.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    This does seem like a Mighty Wind-like portrayal of early 60s LA - where's Eugene Levy?
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    I was thinking maybe Douglas Fairbanks as directed by Wes Anderson, which is more or less the same thing.
    reply
  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    I'd like to see Claus' medical degree - is he JFK's doc as well? Marilyn's? etc.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    He completed his residency with Raymond Chandler's Dr. Verringer.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    I keep thinking Jack Webb is gonna walk in and announce a bust.
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    Maybe they're a mod tribe of vampires.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    They re-styled Draper's hair!
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  • Steve Paradis

    9 months ago

    The theme music from "Rome"? or what?

    Young Herman Kahn protege, talking about MIRV's. Same as the articles in Popular Science, that I read when I was 12. No wonder my retirement plan was nuclear war for so long.

    "LIttle girl, don't get any ideas!" (so she hasn't had one in years!)

    Whew. Thought Joy's spine was going to light up.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    That briefing had a bit of Boris and Natasha to it.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    Was that briefing at the RAND corporation office in Santa Monica?
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    Ad for The Day the Earth Stood Still isn't terribly promising.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    I hear the Jon Hamm character is not particularly well-written.
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  • Steve Paradis

    9 months ago

    Sal is about to levitate through blinking.
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    Don is looking especially dopey this episode.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    He's like part of the scenery, even to Joy's, er, Dad.
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    Damn those Europeans with their loose morals and dubious accents!
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Yeah, even the Brits - and their shady deals with Duck.
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    Yes, I keep expecting Roger Mason to pop in smugging some microfiche in the belly of a small statue.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    Old Europe is working over the Ameri-mutts this week.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    So Peggy is the grandmother of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy/Girl"--who knew.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Heh-heh - yeah, that guy is multi-talented.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    I say that Don is still on the plane from the last episode, and this is a dream sequence--
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    It certainly seems like somebody's dream.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    I get it - "Don Draper" is just his blogger name.
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  • chuck tryon

    9 months ago

    Faulkner was hip enough by 1962 that it would seem like the Euro girl would be reading a more recent novel.
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    What the hell is going on in this show? With this show?
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Wow. What an action-packed episode. Ending with Don's baggage returned to his house, freeing him to be Dick Whitman for someone.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    ...and they bumped out playing Jay Gatsby's theme song. I'm all messed up.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Maybe he and Freddy Rumson are forming a new Hollywood agency?
    I am totally and thoroughly confused....
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    Draper adrift in the sundrenched limbo is reminding me of some of those Tony Soprano dream sequences and the last season Sopranos episode set in Vegas that was somnambulistic and cryptic.
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  • Steve Paradis

    9 months ago

    So, gin is like spinach for Duck?
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    They're really overbanking on the supposed charisma of Jon Hamm/Don Draper and dangerously dulling out the character.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Well, as creepy Duke Daddy said, Don is "beautiful and doesn't say much."
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    You' d think young Pete would have informed on his disappearing boss the second he landed at Idlewild.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    I see Don checking into the Sandstone Retreat in the next episode...oh, wait that's ten years down the road...
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  • Steve Paradis

    9 months ago

    Maybe Don's going Flitcraft, but as Dick Whitman. Hell, it's California--he can be a Congressman for a while.
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  • shirley

    9 months ago

    What the hell was that?

    "I take it you're well off?" Jesus.

    I really get the feeling that Matt Weiner poured all his adolescent fantasies into Don Draper but, being such a painfully uncool guy himself, is ultimately incapable of pulling it off. (No euphemism intended)

    So he's gone from Dick to Don to Dick. Am I reading too much into that?
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  • SweetSue

    8 months ago

    You' d think young Pete would have informed on his disappearing boss the second he landed at Idlewild.
    Well, that ploy didn't work so well the first time he tried it, so he's probably wary.
    I come here and see that everything that I want to say-the Eurotrash are obviously grifters and I thought I heard the theme from "Rome"-I find it's already on the table.
    Gee, you guys are good.
    I've never seen much talk about the time a woman called Dick/Don's bluff at the car dealership? Was that a real job for him, or was he imagining a path not taken?
    reply
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