I definitely think the Andy Warhol thing might come into play with Midge's character, she has that mod hipster thing going as it is so I'm sure the Factory scene will appeal to her.

Yeah, HANNAH KARINA, I really hope they use some of these NYC influences going on. At least something Warhol-inspired because it heralds a very different scene beginning.

Watching Carson on tv from NYC for 90 minutes every nite was something else! I really hope they have some scene from the relatively "new" Peppermint Lounge, too, since that was considered the "thing".

"Wellllllllll, ya gotta do the dance and it goes like this....bop chupa ba pa pa pa chupa...and the name of the dance is the Peppermint Twist! It's alright all night, it's alright-- it's alright-- it's alright-- it's alright! It's ok all day, it's ok-- it's ok-- it's ok-- it's ok! When you learn to do this--the Peppermint Twist!" Joey Dee and The Starlighters could really jive, huh? and... Don't forget Chubby singing "Let's twist again...like we did last summer!" We may not have had any IPods but we had our little transistor radios and man we were "really hummin'" ; ) What memories!

I'm sorry this is off topic, but does anyone know if we can watch the full episodes online? I can't get cable where I live and I'm hooked on Mad Men! I remember the era well!!

Yes, sofia, somewhere on this site I recall seeing that "episode 1 is available online". Don't know if they will start doing that with all the season 1 epis, though...maybe!

I want to see Don and Betty do the "Peppermint twist" on a crowded dance floor with Betty hot in short dress showing off those legs, as the "twist" was born around that time in NYC-the Peppermint Lounge. God, I was a freshman/frat boy in College at Oregon, and I remember also Ray Charles was just starting to get big. So, 1962 has many great musical memories for me, and I agree, bring those sounds into MAD MEN.

Yeah, Michael, it would be pretty hot if Betty ends up in a NYC disco, maybe without Don, dancing the night away. The club scene begins! There was some great music (at least to me) because we started to become glued to our transistor radios during the summer. I loved Bobby Vinton, Connie Francis, Elvis, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, and I think Motown was getting warmed up by then too.

Okay...How about if Betty is "twisting the night away" and Pete walks into the Disco, wanting to get away from that cloying wife of his, and he and Betty make eye contact. Pete not knowing who Betty is, and vice versa, and they come together and get it on, only to leave the Disco together and run smack into Don out for a night on the town behind Betty's back. I would love to be on that sidewalk and see this encounter. Any one else agree??

I think the first thing Betty would do is probably get a bit of "Mother's Little Helper" (valium or some kind barbituate) as the Rolling Stones say from her psychiatrist. Betty's about to bust from her stoic, pent up housewife drudgery.

And it's just about this time that the housewives who are late 20's/early 30's actually feel "trapped" because they're still young and the focus is going to the young. The older generation is starting to lose its status and lustre as the "leaders". My mom was a 26 year old working housewife starting in 1957 and by mid-60's, I think was really choking from the deadend-ness of being a housewife (nope, she didn't divorce). But she was still young. Heck, it was my mother who went and bought my brother his "Beatle" boots and jacket, Beatle wigs, and a Beatle doll (John Lennon) for me, along with tickets to their Seattle Center Coliseum show in August 1964 (the lineup wasn't shabby - Righteous Brothers, Jackie DeShannon).

Yes, I think the only reason the pyschiatrist is in the show is to prescribe the valium. If you look on the MM website that shows interviews with the characters, the most comments are on the pyschiatrist. Everyone thinks he is pretty creepy and it is because he talks so little. You don't know what he is thinking or what he is writing. And we just want Betty to jump up and rip the paper out of his hand to see what he is writing. Betty started to go off on him when he made the comment about her being angry with her mother. He even backed off because he saw Betty was about to blow. Even Don is frustrated when he calls this guy because Don can't interpret his professional jargon. Betty is going to turn and Don will be struggling to bring back the "perfect mother" and household without divorcing Betty. I think there will be a struggle between home and career and Don's perfect world will start crumbling around him. As far as Betty acting on her fantasies with the salesman and washing machine, that probably wouldn't happen. Even though women fantasized about those things, they never acted upon them. That was something the lower class women did, and they would never place themselves in that catagory. Betty will turn to drugs as her new best friend to get through Don's affairs and everyday life as a housewife. Good one about the Pete-Betty affair. That would be cool to see, but not really 1960. I could see the beatnik doing the nasty with Pete, that would be more MM style.

@LUVMADMEN, isn't the psychiatrist a jerk? I guess what Betty's going through is "analysis" as they would say, but he doesn't say a thing! Love the "couch"! Remember in early Woody Allen comedies he'd either talk about being in analysis or they'd show him on the couch, and he'd always say he'd been in analysis for 30 years! Now I see why - they don't talk to the patient! I'm trying to remember what the popular prescribed drug was that they used - seconal, phenobarbitol or something like that? Going to a psychiatrist was considered a pretty shameful thing in those days (the shame is really in the ripoff). I think it only became okay or "standard" because of Woody Allent movies and when the Bob Newhart show came on the air.

Everytime I see Betty in her therapy sessions, I almost want to change the channel. Between the creepy psychiatrist and that horrible couch (it looks as comfortable as a slab of concrete) it is enough to give me nightmares. It just seems so surreal that someone could be suffering from a little stress back in the 60's and BAM, they are candidates for a psychiatrist? If you look at the clients Bob Newhart had on his show and Betty Draper..what a difference in clientel, huh? Poor Betty, she needs to stop seeing the shrink, stop drinking wine and start guzzling vodka like her pregnant friend Francine. She has a nanny for the kids and she can stay passed out while the kids are at school and during all of Don's affairs. Time will fly by and she can sober up long enough to cook TV dinners and be Don's eye candy at SC parties. Everyone will be happy. Let's not forget Francine will be getting a divorce from her skirt chasing husband this season (sorry, Betty - Francine's husband WAS calling his mistress and NOT a caterer for a surprise party..LOL). I'm sure Francine will be happy to show Betty the ropes when she has had enough of the Don Draper love machine.

@luvmadmen, yes the psychiatry sessions are weird. No wonder alternative "therapy" came out in the sixties like Est, transcendental meditation, and some scream therapy I can't remember the name of. Sure beats talking to yourself! Might as well tell it to your neighbors or your girlfriends - at least you'd get some feedback!

It looks like Betty's street is going to turn into Bye Bye Hubby Lane. First there was the divorcee who moved in (and was shunned) - Glen's mother? Now Francine discovers her cheatin' man. Betty follows suit right after. They could all end up flying to Reno together to camp out for their 6 week residency!

Just like in the old '30's? Norma Shearer movie, "The Women" (remade with June Allison, I believe in the '50's) where she decided to fight the ho (Joan Crawford/Joan Collins) for her man with the "'jungle red' claws" (new color at the manicurist's) at the end...but that was only after she went to the dude ranch with Paulette Goddard and assorted other divorcees-to-be to bad mouth and hate those low down cheatin' men for the whole movie!

@SCFAN, "The Women" was exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that entry about Reno! Loved that movie! And remember, the shocker was that not one man appeared in it? They're supposedly remaking it, but don't think it could surpass the 30's version.

Sounds like "First Wives Club" to me! But in that movie, the women make their ex's pay over and over. I can see Francine doing that (she was ready to poison her husband), but not Betty. Betty would spend years in therapy over the shame of her divorce.

Betty really is a sweet soul, and she sure would be ashamed. Divorce wasn't the norm. Before no-fault divorce, going to court and testifying how they'd "wronged" you was pretty humiliating. At least that's what my friend told me - it was awful.

Well, the marathon is on...poor Betty drove her car into the tree! As to all your comments above, I remember when Liz Taylor "stole" Eddie Fisher away from Debbie Reynolds--not long after Mike Todd died in the plane crash--saying "What do you expect me to do--sleep alone?" And when Debbie said in divorce court simply: "My husband has fallen in love with another woman" and stepped down from the witness stand. Classy...but her heart had to be breaking and she had to have wanted to blast him with both barrels.

I know, scfan, when Elizabeth Taylor went and cheated again(!) this time with Richard Burton, well.....who knows if Debbie Reynolds ever commiserated with Sybil Burton. Both blown away by the same woman.

Actually, what really surprises me is that there's any shock, moral judgment or condemnation left anymore about public affairs/infidelity (i.e. Meg Ryan/Dennis Quaid/Russell Crowe or Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie). And, Jolie, like Elizabeth Taylor, stole a man away from a woman twice, (ie. Laura Dern/Billy Bob Thornton and Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt).

You kinda figure the public is pretty lax about morals these days, but not as much as the movies suggest. What looks so inconsequential in the movies (infidelity) is a whole other ballgame when real people are involved.

And what trophy do these homewreckers get? They get the pleasure of always looking over their shoulder to see if their new man is fishing for a new hottie. I don't get it? If you get a man that has cheated on his wife with you, wouldn't he cheat on you too when you become his wife? Debbie Reynolds probably knew that it was only a matter of time before the Lizzy dumped Bobbie. And she probably had a good laugh when it was all over. As much as we think our society has changed their attitudes about affairs (look how we all accepted the Clinton/Lewinsky affair) that doesn't mean there isn't any less pain involved today than their was 4 decades ago. I think women can forgive, but they will never really forget. And sometimes they don't ever really forgive. Many will wait it out because of the kids being young. Then one day the pain becomes so unbearable that divorce is their only way to stop the suffering. Infidelity will always feel the same to women no matter what era they live in.

The dialogue hit a few false notes (too contemporary - not true to the period) - I think it was episode 3, the kid's birthday party, and the wives are in the kitchen talking about vacations during school break. First, they called it "spring break" when in 1960 it would have been called "Easter Vacation" (it was still ok to acknowledge Christmas and Easter in the olden days). Next, one woman mentioned they were "thinking of 7 days 6 nights in Boca Raton" and the big mosquitoes. It's very unlikely that a young middle or upper-middle class family would have spent a week in Boca Raton in 1960. It was virtually unknown then, population maybe 6000, nothing like today. Just about the only hotel was the very very expensive, exclusive "Boca Raton Hotel and Club"; most likely they would have stayed in Fort Lauderdale. Also, there are very few mosquitoes in South Florida in the Spring. Finally, when she mentioned Boca Raton the others make comments about all the jews ("big noses") and non-jews being outnumbered, etc. This is not at all true to 1960. In those days, Boca was "restricted" and almost no jews lived here, much less vacationed here. The aforementioned "Hotel and Club" would not even admit them. (It's not pretty but that's the way it was.) The jews mostly stayed in Miami Beach. Palm Beach County (where Boca is located) was very "wasp" until about the mid to late 1970's, when a lot of jews started moving up here from Miami and down from NYC.

Luvmadmen and JAMM4, what is strange to me is that there isn't any animosity toward Liz Taylor (by fans) to this day--- over all the husband-stealing she did)...I've heard before that the fact that she was widowed so young by Mike Todd and was beaten by her first husband (Hilton) kind of bullet proofed her or something!

@scfan, who knows why? Remember they (Dick & Liz) became (after the Kennedys) quite a big "power" couple in the '60s, and the press couldn't get enough of them. Of course, her star was really rising as an actress, and Debbie Reynolds' was on the wane, so......

That's interesting information about Florida, bocaratonfan. I wouldn't know any of that. I've never been to the eastcoast. A side of the country I'd love to see before I die or I'm too old to walk!

Thanks for the insight, bocaratonfan!! I hope the MM writers are taking a look at this blog. I get the feeling sometimes that history books are written to gloss over uncomfortable issues. It takes those who lived through the era to really see history as it was, not how it was written. History is not always pretty, but it shouldn't be changed in the name of Hollywood.

thanks, jamm54 and luvadmen. There has always been a strong connection between New York (and less so, Chicago) and the east coast of South Florida. Remember Jackie Gleason's tv variety show from Miami Beach? In the 1950's and 1960's, it was a super "cool" place for northerners to vacation at Christmas and Easter (summer, not so much). The northern upper class rich had always wintered in Palm Beach and thereabouts. The middle or upper middle class showed their upward mobility and "coolness" by vacationing in Ft Lauderdale (a very happening place) or, if you were jewish, Miami Beach. Then they (northerners) started moving here in larger numbers in the early 1970s.

Yes, I loved the Jackie Gleason Show, bocaratonfan! Especially the opening overhead shot of the "June Taylor Dancers". Wasn't the soaper movie "Where The Boys Are" supposed to take place in Fort Lauderdale? Where all the college kids go for "spring vacation"?

Yes, Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and their friends were cavorting in Ft. Lauderdale. That's before the youth drug and alcohol culture of the later 60s and 70s changed the nature of college spring break to a wild street orgy. Families were driven away. It got so bad that by the early 90s the City of Ft Laud made a lot of changes to discourage college kids from coming.

Man oh man...Annette and her cronies in their bullet-bra swimsuits!

Annette "Spoon-some-Jello"? (Funicello) Remember her in those commercials? The movie "Where the Boys Are" really bothered me. I was expecting to see a Mickey Mouse Club Mousekeeter movie of kids surfing and playing at the beach. Instead I saw something more like "The Accused". It definately threw me a loop and gave me Spring Break nightmares. But I had to laugh at them in their bullet-bra swimsuits and their beehive hair dos that never seemed to be effected by swimming.

Wherever did they get the idea that conical, pointed breasts were attractive? You will notice that Joan's are very rounded - is that a concession to modern sensibilities? I don't think Poor Annette -she has bad MS and is now mostly paralyzed, I think. Frankie Avalon still looks great in his late 60s, and has lots of children and grandchildren.

Bless poor old Annette. I recall her (Skippy?) peanut butter commercials, too. She used to sell teddy bears on QVC or HSN? until she got too ill. I saw Frankie selling some capsacin (sp?) achy joint cream on one of the home shopping networks a few years ago. He does still look good.

I love Annette and Frankie movies. I thought she was sooo great looking and him too. My only beef was that she was always pretty bitchy in the Annette/Frankie movies, but I still loved them. Watching them, there's such hokey junk, but I thought there great.

He bocaratonfan, the conical, pointed breasts did look appealing to Madonna. She brought them back, but thought they looked better on the outside than the inside. LOL Gag, weren't the 90's a fashion disaster era!! I'm sure that generation will have a good laugh at all the fashions they were wearing when they look back. I have always loved the clothes of the 60's, it was the underwear that sucked! How could wearing 5 pounds of stiff, bulky underwear make you feel sexy? And yes, Frankie Valle will always be the heart throb of the 60's, just like Rick Springfield will always be the heart throb of the 80's...thump, thump

I admit I can't comment much on the culture in '62, since I was born in '63. However I laughed when I saw a particular ashtray on Draper's desk that I recognized to be an exact ashtray my parents owned when I was a kid. It is a silver, round ashtray w/ 2 fish in the middle, w/ their mouths open to hold the ciggarettes. It was very cool to see that prop in the show and added more authenticity for me. I wish I knew where the set decorator found that ashtray. I never knew what happened to the one my parents owned.

Try hooking the back of the silk stockings into the garter in the girdle - what a nightmare if you had short arms! The girdles used to give me the worst stomach ache. Yet, I never thought I was wearing a corset, but of course that's exactly what they were! 20th c. corsets!

But in school, the girdles were easier than dealing with the garter belts. I must have been getting the wrong size either in the belts or the stockings, because they always felt like they were slipping down. It might have been because I had no hips at the time I was wearing them (14-15?). I think that's why I ended up in kneesocks for most of high school.

As a kid, what I really hated where those full scratchy slips so the dresses would stick out. What was that material? Anybody remember? It felt just like a potscrubber or brillo pad. Awful!

True psychoanalysis - not psychotherapy - involved exactly what Betty's psychiatrist does on the show. It was developed by Sigmund Freud and employs the famous and stereotypical "couch" where the patient reclines and free-associates while the psychiatrist simply takes notes and allows the patient through free-association to explore and uncover his/her difficulties. As the psychiatrist listens and observes, he/she begins to piece together unconscious conflicts in the patient's character. I believe that Betty's doctor has voiced a central issue for Betty - as would normally be done in this type of therapy - and her response is telling. Psychoanalysis is time-intensive and difficult. In its heyday, patients would go in several times a week to move it along. These days, the best all of us can do is hope for our HMO's to pay for 20 face-to-face "talk therapy" sessions with our psychologists every year. (See this link for more information on psychoanalysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoanalysis)

Very few psychiatrists or psychologists employ psychoanalysis any longer. Mostly, patients sit face-to-face with a therapist engaged in mutual dialogue involving one of many psychotherapeutic methods.

But it is interesting to know that in terms of Betty's situation, and her psychiatrist voicing the opinion that she is angry with her mother is the idea that "essentially connected to the psychoanalytic view of repression is the assumption that parental treatment of children, especially mothering, is the source of many, if not most, adult problems ranging from personality disorders to emotional problems to mental illnesses." ( http://skepdic.com/psychoan.html ) This certainly makes sense when we review all the various and sometimes conflicting comments which Betty voices about her mother over the course of Season 1.

"That's right!"...(as "Marie" says on "Everybody Loves Raymond")---"It's always the mother's fault!" And in her case, it had to be! What a smother-mother she was! But that's another story...and a different (and overshown) series.

Since many are discussing the accuracy of various details that portray the times, I am wondering about a small off-hand remark Rachel says to Don during the Babylon episode, when they meet "just for lunch" so he can interview her about Israel. Don accidently spills his drink on his tie, and she suddenly lets her guard down to help him attack the stain with a little water on her napkin. Rachel chuckles with something like, "and you're usually so put together." Isn't that expression more contemporary?

No, I don't think so. Pretty sure Eva Marie Saint said something like that to Cary Grant in "North By Northwest" from 1959. Just a common phrase.

When Betty told the therapist that her mother called her a prostitute for being a model, that pretty much gave Betty an invitation to psychoanalysis. What kind of mother does that? I think Betty's mother was jealous of Betty's beauty and lashed out at her time and time again. I think she finally felt Betty's beauty paid off when Betty married a stud muffin like Don Draper and she let up. Don's voice is what makes me melt every episode. You throw in those eyes and a smile, and any woman melts in Don's presence. Where has Jon Hamm been hiding all these years. Watch out Brad Pitt, there's a new hunk in town.

If I am anything, I am probably more a Hitchcock devotee than
a Mad Men Devotee (close though). So I will do my homework. Thanks.

luvmadmen, I was just watching that episode tonight too, where Betty says in analysis that her mother called her a "prostitute" for being a model. And somewhere in that episode, when she talked about meeting Don while she was a model, she said they dated for a couple of months, became engaged, and then she got pregnant.

It wasn't clear whether they were married before she became pregnant. Did Don marry Betty because she was pregnant? Maybe that's why Betty's mother called her a "prostitute" - because her pregnancy happened while she was a model.

Someone else brought up the "did Don marry Betty because she was pregnant?" question in another discussion.

Now I'm beginning to wonder. Don REALLY doesn't seem like marriage material. Is this the reason he got married? He wouldn't leave Betty to the same "fate" as his mother of being labelled a prostitute (especially by her own mother) or having his offspring labelled as he was?

It was all kind of fuzzy about their engagement, pregnancy, and marriage. I think Betty said only a couple of months being engaged, so they didn't know each other for long, it seems.

I think Don swept her off her feet (literally) and of course, it being Don, how could she resist?

I'll buy that! I couldn't, the cad!

In the 7/27 premier of MM's season 2, we start to get foreshadows of events and people that will change the world in 1962-63 (e.g., Jackie Kennedy's live-TV White House tour I remember watching it.)

A critical question about Don Draper and his character's ark: as the man who embodies the values of the era, will he be the first to reject it all and go in search of himself? Love to see that happen. When does Peggy Olsen (Liz Moss) open
her own agency>

Interesting how in this first episode of Season 2, reverberations of Betty's past and her mother's remarks about her being a prostitute come back in the form of Betty's former roommate/model, who has indeed become a prostitute (albeit a high-class call girl). And Betty's provocative outfit..black bustier, garter belt, the night in a hotel room...isn't she playing out the fantasy, although in a "safe" situation with classier trappings? Not that she's overtly aware of it, of course. I think, although Betty's hardly going to become "liberated" vis-a-vis the feminist party line, she's definitely going to come more into her own this season; the winds of change brought about by the Kennedys, (especially Jackie) are going to have a perceptible influence on how she views and portrays herself.

Yeah, Betty's feeling powerful right now, and who knows where that's coming from? The psychiatrist? She's whole now, and is going to start singing "I Am Woman"?

I'm kind of hesitant to embrace the 1960's. Culture wise although many fantastic things were acheived, it was also an unravelling as well. There was pristineness to the 1950's that I really like. I hate to see that end in this show.

The power of the characters is in the writing that identifies the aloneness and searching amid a fast changing world in the 1960's. I love watching every minute of Mad Men because I look at the circumstances of that world as a 13 year old teenager, which I was , who had just lost his mother in December 1960. The feelings all surfaced again and I am glad they have. I don't think I understood them then, but I do now. It is really enlightening. I do enjoy lively weekly discussions about the show with family, friends and work colleagues.

It is a brilliant show with a stellar cast. I hope this show will last for the entie decade of the 1960's.
Congratulations to everyone! It is the very best

You said it, johnnyoctober, hope it lasts at least as long as M. Weiner's other masterpiece (The Sopranos) which was about 7 or 8 seasons? I could go for at least that and still want more!