Part 2 - Don's and Tony's Similar Trajectory and Similar Women
When Don Draper is introduced we see him living the city life with his artist girlfriend, struggling for ideas to pitch to a tobacco client. It's not until the end of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" * that we discover Don has a wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs. Don spends the next few seasons cycling through a load of (dark haired, independent, professional) women. While surprising to see at the end of the first episode, we sort of accept this as the status quo and a sign of the times.
While his blonde wife somewhat complicity allows this behavior, Don's goes through a roster of dark haired mistresses including:
- Midge - owns her own artistry business
- Rachel Menken - department store owner
- Bobbie Barret - her husband's agent/manager
- Suzanne - teacher at Sally's school
- Gloria Trillo - luxury car saleswoman
- Valentina - art curator
- Julianna Skiff - realtor **
- Sonya - high end Vegas stripper ***
- Dr. Melfi **
- And so on...****
After a season on their own where they live in their own versions of squalor and behave poorly, they both find themselves back in a home with a wife at the start of the season that follows (Don and Megan marry and Tony and Carm reconcile). They then both spend a season keeping their vows, though tempted (Don's fever dreams, xxxx; Tony and Julianna Skiff).
Don seems to lose interest in Megan when she 1) leaves advertising which is is obviously good at and 2) helps her get a job. Megan doing away with what Don views as a professional and independent life puts him back to his old ways.
Tony loses patience with behaving when he sees Christopher with Julianna in "Kaisha" immeiately regretting his decision. He also catches hell from Carm following Christopher's movie premiere when she takes scenes in the movie for Christopher's mistaken impression that Tony and Adrianna slept together***. Both serve to increase the riff between Tony and Christopher as well as create resentment within Tony. As he sees it, even when he behaves, he is punished. Shortly thereafter, Tony returns to his ways with a girl while he and Paulie are on the lamb in "Remember When."
The point is Don has followed a similar path as Tony and is about at the point where Tony was at the middle of Season Six: Part Two of The Sopranos. How he gets from the current point to the end point remains to be seen. The biggest difference will be the role the 1960s plays in this shows. The setting almost acts as character, like the Island on Lost. A central tenet of the show has been to convey different characters reactions to both life events and current events. The events provide the setting and conflict and the characters behavior so far will inform their reaction. Which means we need to take all of Don's behavior thus far into account and predict how he will react to the upcoming era in the show's timeline, which is likely to be the setting at the conclusion of the series, the late 1960s and early 1970s.
* Fun Fact - the episode title is also the episode title of an early Homicide: Life on the Street episode. In the episode, from the early 90s, cops are still allowed to smoke in a government building, though they are considering a no-smoking section. When I first watched this around 2005 it was jarring to see even then. The episode also features cops fooling a suspect into thinking a copy machine is a lie detector, used again in the fifth season of The Wire, "More with Less."
** Tony makes this observation aloud in "Kaisha"
** He literally just "spent time" with her in this case, following Tony's new lease on life, and Melfi's rebuffs.
*** Possibly a real 'pro' in old profession
**** Two others meet the requirement halfway, Irina's dark haired but dependent on Tony and Svetlana is blonde but owns her own home care business...Tony's attraction to her starts when he sees her building a website herself
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