Raw Data: Favors

These are initial thoughts and observations for Mad Men episode 6-11, "Favors" written by Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner and directed by Jennifer Getzinger, who did "For Immediate Release" earlier in the season.

• The episode concludes on September 20, 1968
• At the end of the episode, several different characters are watching television.  A few clues in the conversation like "intelligence" "governor" and "extended finger into the Pacific" give it away.  What sounds like "Garret" is actually "McGarret."  They are watching the pilot episode of Hawaii Five 0, aired on that date on CBS.  
• We're about at the point where The Wonder Years takes place.  The first episode of Wonder Years is set at the start of the school year in 1968.  Winnie's older brother has been killed in Vietnam.
• 1968 was the highest casualty year of the war in Vietnam.  By over 5,000.
• The Wonder Years broadcast 20 years after it was set
• Speaking of other media set in the 1960s, the scene where Don and Art are having drinks it sounds like this is playing in the background
•  The "daed si lauP" theory doesn't seem to hold in this episode which has Megan interacting with a plethora of characters
• Bob, don't go for Pete.  You can do better.
• And, how about Pete's completely blase reaction to him?  One would expect Pete to pitch a fit.
• Also perplexing is why Pete would believe anything his mother would say about Spanish Tom Buchanan 
• Compare this rebuff from Pete to the rebuff from Sal to Lee Garner Jr.  While the client-advertiser relationship is different than that of junior partner-account exec., it's still a wildly different reaction
• I don't thinks this is the whole story on Bob, and I think he may even be not gay.  I think he has a larger con going on.
• Bob was a lot more forceful with that scene, ordering Pete to "Sit Down!" 
• It is almost like Bob is trying to incite a certain reaction from people by acting differently to each one (Joan, Ginsberg, Pete)
• Or maybe he's just a red herring
• Don made a very clear statement "War is wrong" that we haven't heard him make before
• Peggy is sitting home alone with a cat, which her mother advised her to get and replace as they died every 17 or so years.
• Pete's apartment is much improved.  He seems to have accepted he's there for the foreseeable future.  Though it's not clear anyone else knows that.
• A while back I read that Matthew Weiner likes to incorporate people's real life talents in the show (and I'm trying to find an article stating that).   It came on the heels of the episode where Joan plays the accordion because Christina Hendricks can play the accordion.  So I always think of that when I see Ken Cosgrove tap dancing or Roger Sterling juggling and think it's some random thing the actor learned in their years
• Ironically, Jessica Pare is not a dancer
• While Don tested the water to see if anyone at GM had connections that could help his friend in question, they all shift uncomfortably in their seats, silent, knowing their business at the moment is reliant on all those kids, like the one Don is talking about, being shipped overseas for fodder.  But GM doesn't want want to admit it, or even think about it.
• Isn't Pete's friend at DoD the same friend he involved with Don's background/desertion?