What’s Don Draper Doing?

It would be an under­state­ment to say I’ve been remiss in writ­ing about Mad Men this sea­son. The show con­tin­ues to bog­gle my mind and last night’s episode, “The Jet Set,” was no excep­tion. So while I’m still scratch­ing my head, let me sug­gest you read Alan Sepin­wal­l’s take over at What’s Alan Watching?

The hobo trope Alan teas­es out is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. The Bob Dylan ref­er­ence may be a lit­tle Young Indi­ana Jones, but we’ll see where it goes.The com­ments are worth check­ing out, too. Sev­er­al read­ers take issue with how “Sopranos‑y” it felt, and I can’t dis­agree. If that show had a weak­ness, it was those indul­gent, clunky flashback/dream sequences.

Some com­menters also feel that this episode was an homage to Felli­ni and Anto­nioni, which is plau­si­ble, but poor­ly exe­cut­ed. Don would’ve been repulsed at a “Sick Soul of the Bour­geoisie” par­ty, yet he felt seemed almost at home, even in the most awk­ward moments.

I’m still curi­ous to see how every­thing pans out in the final two episodes. I cringe at the prospect of this show tak­ing a turn for the bizarre at the last moment.