What Sally Saw, or “That One Time Law School Ruined My Personality”

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Spoiler Alert
The Summary
The Opinion
That One Time Law School Ruined My Personality
Waiting for Superman

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

This blog post largely concerns action from last week’s episode of AMC’s Mad Men, “Favors”.

The impetus for this post comes out of a faux controversy arising out of the aforementioned “Favors” … And a battle between the titanic wills of YT and the missus. If you haven’t seen “Favors” (but care) consider yourself spoiler-warned.

Summary:

In “Favors” we are introduced to Mitchell Rosen, the son of Don Draper’s neighbors the Mrs. Sylvia and Dr. Arnold Rosen. Earlier in the season it was revealed that Don was having an extramarital affair with Mrs. Sylvia (played by onetime Freaks and Geeks star Linda Cardellini), which has since cooled.

Now I don’t possess an exhaustive understanding of the mechanics or politics of Vietnam-era military conscription, but it seems that Mitchell did something stupid to queer his draft-exempt status as a student, and has gone and gotten himself earmarked by Selective Service. Over the course of the episode, Don calls in favors various — including putting his agency’s relationship with its biggest client in an awkward position — to shield Mitchell from a harsh destiny in a wartorn southeast Asia.

Now unbeknownst to Don, his daughter Sally has met Mitchell in the apartment building lobby and decided he was the dreamiest. Sally’s stupid friend slipped a note into the Rosen apartment, which the young Sally understandably endeavored to recover in order to avoid adolescent embarrassment. By tricking the gullible door man to Don’s building — essentially stealing her way in and committing a B&E* — Sally enters the Rosens’ apartment to recover the love note, stumbles clumsily on her dad ucking-fay a stranger:

What Sally Saw

Eep! As a “thank you” for saving her son, Mrs. Rosen has rekindled the affair with Don; to what extent we don’t know, especially after Sally’s discovery.

Predictably — Sally runs off.

Don’s machinations are as we said successful and dreamy Mitchell gets uninvited to Vietnam; Don is proclaimed “the sweetest man” by his current wife Megan (not Sally’s mom, as that marriage ended at least in part by Don’s rampant infidelity from X-[wo]Man Emma Frost); and Sally curses him angrily, running off again.

The previous Mrs. Draper. Oops.

The Opinion:

Mrs. MichaelJ declared Don 100% culpable in “destroying” Sally Draper’s young mind (or at least innocence) as she got stuck finding her pops sticking it to some woman who wasn’t his wife.

For my part, I have a low opinion of infidelity. I am totally happy blaming Don for infidelity and a dozen other affronts to good family management and / or child rearing but I can’t see blaming him for What Sally Saw 100%. What if he were cheating on the moon? Is he supposed to predict his daughter stealing a rocket ship and happening upon them up there at the wrong moment, too?

Wifey got kind of hot and bothered over my defense of Draper and asked me to ask some of my friends. One of my best friends ranted and ranted at me the next day about Don’s culpability. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is this about Don or your dad?” MY DAD OF COURSE! (Her dad was a cheater and she stopped speaking to him years ago.)

Before I got back to my desk at the office she had already called one of my co-workers RE: this. There was an IM waiting for me.

These womyn and their conspiracies!

Poor Don!

Look people — Like I said, I am perfectly fine blaming Don for whatever. Like I said, I have a poor opinion of infidelity. Clearly he was doing something wrong. Clearly he could have gotten caught by someone. But his daughter? In terms of What Sally Saw… I really don’t think you can blame poor Don 100%.

A few weeks ago, the team of YT, Josh Ravitz, and Thea Steele scrubbed out of a Team Limited tournament. With plenty of time on the afternoon I suggested we go see Iron Man 3. Thea didn’t want to. “Who can relate to an aloof, arrogant, billionaire who thinks he is better than everyone else?”

“Well he is smarter / richer / better than everyone else.”
-Things I didn’t actually say

“You’re right… Who?”
-Also something I didn’t say.

Don Draper — for whatever his other faults — is depicted on Mad Men as the greatest copywriter ever to walk into a client meeting. He is part pitchman, part hypnotist, and all Adonis. Don’s execution has been slipping in recent seasons, delegating to junior copywriters, getting embarrassingly drunk at public events, spacing out and disappearing for weeks at a time… But his combination of luck, audacity, and self-confidence have him and his succession of partnerships landing bigger business and building a more and more successful advertising firm. For all the failings in his personal life, Don is remarkably moral in a business context, using his influence to protect associates who are weaker than he is, and to reward the hard-working or talented lower on the totem pole… even if they are — gasp — women.

I have been accused by many of these women of siding with Don “all the time”.

I have in fact sided with Don x minus one times.

Every single Don-smashing opinion I had gotten to this point was from the fairer sex. Clearly they were all biased. Maybe a right-thinking person** could jibe with YT. I put it out to the Unstoppable Twitter Army.

@fivewithflores is this a joke tweet?

— Osyp Lebedowicz (@OsypL) June 11, 2013

Not trolling.

Further:

@fivewithflores Obv Don is the monster in this scenario

— Osyp Lebedowicz (@OsypL) June 11, 2013

Monster! Osyp had Peggy beat by a week!

Could I be wrong? Had I been in the wrong from the first disagreement with K? I apologized to her.

But how did I get here?

That One Time Law School Ruined My Personality

If you’ve listened to the first episode of The Official Miser’s Guide*** you know that I was attending law school when I wrote Who’s the Beatdown?.

The principal way law school ruined my personality was accomplished by my Contracts professor on the first day; he introduced the idea that lawyers think differently from everyone else. Lawyers — especially by nature of having to advocate for villainous clients they “know” are in the wrong (and / or wrangling around the intellectual acrobatics of opposing lawyers) — have to imagine alternate universes while arguing seemingly contradictory things. They also often tend to think in the manner of the letter of the law, regardless of what regular (shall we say “right thinking”) folk might believe when presented the same set of circumstances, which can be alienating.

In my mind, Sally’s B&E was not a foreseeable intervening event by Don (it was in fact an actual crime); in a court of law he would almost certainly be absolved of the wrong of What Sally Saw regardless of the fact that he was responsible for an original wrong of ucking-fay not-his-wife.

The 1/3 lawyer in me sez: Poor Don. The criminal Sally had done this to herself.

But everybody else seems to disagree (except for Lan D. Ho — who blamed Sally’s stupid friend).

So that 1/3 lawyer in me thinks one way… maybe is “right”. But what does it mean if that 1/3 person is alone in the rational universe?

When I got my NLP certification****, I learned that the most powerful tool in human experience is rapport. Rapport can a superpower more powerful than — gasp — math. It is the quality that connects historic leaders, commission-crushing salesmen, and notorious Lotharios. Rapport, put simply, is the idea that people like to do things for people that they like; and that people like people who are like them.

So basically the opposite of alienating yourself while logically convinced you are right.

In the interest of superpowers (i.e. the cultivation of future influence), I decided to graciously scoop in every direction.

Firestarter: What do you think? You know, about What Sally Saw?

Waiting for Superman

On the subject of superpowers, ComiXology is having a crazy sale on Superman comics right now, no doubt in concert with this weekend’s release of Man of Steel (which I just got home from). Basically over 200 Superman comics at 50-75% off.

Some highlights:

Action Comics (2011-)
I’m currently binge-reading Grant Morrison’s whole run on the current Action Comics; when I wrote Teddy Card Game Asks About the New 52 I had only read the first of Morrison’s 18-issue run. I am on my second and even third readings of many of these stories in the current binge-read, and I have come to the conclusion that this is simply one of the most special runs in the history of superhero comics. Rags Morales is unbelievable, conveying mass, muscle, a visceral physicality in his everyman Superman; Grant is classic Grant with his huge ideas, time travel, Easter eggs, and cameos. You really get the idea that this was a labor of love and the literal capstone of his work on DC One Million, All-Star Superman, etc. If you aren’t going to sample any of the other stuff in the current ComiXology sale, I would heartily recommend the eight issues of Action Comics featured therein.

All-Star Superman
It’s been called the best Superman story ever told. I am certainly not going to disagree; as it is in fact my favorite Superman story ever. Grant’s ideas are bigger than ever, he has the A+ Frank Quitely as his playmate on visuals throughout. All-Star Superman starts with a trip to the sun, has irresistible forces up against immovable objects, mythical heroes and villains, and Lex Luthor at his absolute bestworst. Very much a Silver Age Superman story that makes sense even to modern comics audiences; which is another way of saying it brings out the best of what makes comics comics.

Kingdom Come
Mark Waid and Alex Ross in a genre-redefining four issue steal. I own all the originals from when they were original but at $.99 it is just stupid not to pad the old iPad (I did).

Secret Identity
Stuart Immonen has become one of the biggest stars in superhero pencils since his work on The New Avengers and other Marvel “event”-style books; Secret Identity showcases an Immonen from a decade ago; looking little like he does today (his cut-down style was developed largely on Warren Ellis’s Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.), but gorgeous nevertheless (just different-gorgeous). Rich instead of minimal. Really rich. Not quite the ROI on $4 that you would get with a Kingdom Come but still worth more than $4; thoroughly emotionally engaging comic book story IMO. And did I mention beautiful?

Superman/Batman
I mention this only because it includes my all-time favorite fight scene (Superman and Batman v. Captain Marvel and Hawkman, which I have written about multiple times before); also on sale.

I wish I could say I am a ComiXology affiliate or something, but I really just think you should get in on these steal-tacular Superman opportunities before 6/20.

LOVE
MIKE

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* My legal opinion

** You know, with a penis

*** And if you haven’t listened to it, you can download the first episode of The Official Miser’s Guide for free here.

**** Substantially more useful than my legal training in basically every way.