Second Things.

Where to begin. I propose we tackle the minutiae with a two-pronged attack. One dissecting the latest season, the other analyzing from Season 1 Episode 1 - as one will inform the other.

To begin the beginning, I would like to point out the accuracy of my "Don Draper" character analyzation after "The Suitcase" episode. In my opinion, it was spot on to what was revealed in "The Summer Man" episode. To remind you of my pre-blog brilliance:

Dick is the "was" - the past - in Don's persona, "Don Draper" is the character he created and fought to be by burying any hint of his shameful past, and Don is the man knocking about within the shell of the now obsolete "Don Draper" character.

In my opinion, Dick's demise was the crux of the first three seasons - with Don the last hold out on laying that moldering persona to rest. All that Don fought to achieve (by scrubbing out any fleck of his Dick Whitman personality and striving for the "Ad Man" kingdom he wanted) was accomplished when his desertion and assumption of Don Draper's name was revealed and excused by most. That secret kept him playing the character of "Don Draper" as he created him in Roger's image rather than fully becoming Don the Man (instead of Don the Character). What he feared so deeply has come to pass - and passed with little more than a tremor when he was expecting a devastating earthquake (though the earthquake hit his home rather than his career where he expected it).

No more Dick, he is now just Don - though fighting the core reality of himself as a human being - because he's not quite sure who that Don will be. In my opinion, I think this season Don is finding that deep down he is a weaker man than the constant secrecy and battling for respectability forced him to portray.

You once asked if I thought "Don was libido unchecked by the semi-moral center of Dick Whitman?

I have to say that I do not think that Don is libido unchecked by Dick - I do not believe that Dick had or was a semi-moral center. Dick had, in my opinion, only a desire to succeed to the nth degree above the survival he grew up in - no matter what the cost, or moral crossed. To me, the suppressed bit of Dick left in Don is the wild recklessness - an almost unchecked bit this season - that reared its head briefly in the previous three seasons. As stated, I think that the revealing of his history as Dick Whitman to his Manhattan associates and his wife released the required restraint Don kept his true reckless nature under because he considered it "low-class."

Any sense of morality within Don, which I feel is more an aura of propriety than morality, is borne from an aping of what he deemed as right and proper for the caricature of that "Don Draper" he'd been crafting from the very beginning. The secret affairs, the pliant wife at home, the explosive rage when anyone dared ad lib from the script Don was writing for his "Don Draper" leading man in the play of his ideal life - all played a part in the faux life he was creating. But now that has all crumbled, leaving him in the life he wanted...only alone.

With the last vestiges of the required secrecy that infused the strength and mystery into the "Don Draper" character gone, Don is currently discovering there isn't much left. As a result, Season Four has been all about Don's discovery of the emptiness in the outward trappings of the life he created while sorely missing the undervalued personal connections he abused and destroyed.
Alone, Don now is untortured by all but himself. He's got the keys to the kingdom, he's still admired, still desired, still praised, still envied. Unfortunately, now that he's achieved all the outward trappings, Don is finding himself left with the man he found so unsatisfactory, he went to all this trouble to escape him in the first place.

Call him Dick. Call him Don. He is a man unhappy with the core of himself, no matter the setting.

And now, in "The Summer Man," Don is beginning to reckon, reflect and rebirth himself yet again. I would argue that all the minutiae of Don's character I have just explored above was reflected upon in this very latest episode. Do you dare disagree?

First Things.

Calm down. This is "Dumpster Full of Draper," a forum where Tommy and Christine will either debate, agree, or passive-aggressively insult each other over the various minutiae of AMC's Mad Men. You are welcome to join in, even join the ranks of author with us, as long as you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you aren't, in fact, comfortable with failure.