Kennedy's election...Marilyn Monroe's death...Cuban Missile Crisis...

Matt Wiener loves to use major events of the era as backdrop and for texture in the Mad Men narrative. Sometime in Season 3 they will show a TV set mentioning Military Adivsors in Viet Nam. Most importantly, he will not pass up the Kennedy assassination, Nov 22 1963. My guess is that this will be in the season 3 finale.

Most likely 1963. Reason? A promo shot for Season 3 shows Dona nd Betty leaving the hospital with a baby. She told Don she was pregnant in October 1962 (Cuban missile crisis.) Also, this excerpt from a short magazine article with January Jones:

"January’s character, who is married to advertising guru Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, is pregnant during the show’s third season, premiering August 16. It has affected her wardrobe: “We’ve done a little bit less petticoats and it’s been really fun."

“They tell us to gain weight, gain weight, gain weight, because they want a soft, voluptuous woman which they were [back then] which is beautiful, as it should be.”

http://www.okmagazine.com/2009/07/january-jones-too-skinny-for-mad-men/#more-409831

I hope someone is indeed telling January to gain weight! She is extremely beautiful, but as thin as vemicelli.

Yes, JJ can take a cue from Christina H....voluptuous is indeed beautiful!

My bet is that Betty's pregnancy will be the same one she told Don about at the end of S2. One of the things that may constrain the time frame is the prominence of the roles of the Draper kids. We know what they look like and how old they're supposed to be. If the story jumped ahead too fast, it wouldn't look right, especially with Bobby.

In the early days of Mad Men publicity Matt Weiner said he had planned for five seasons ending in 1969. Of course, anything could happen to change that plan. Other successful series continued long after the creator had estimated they would end. MW wrote for such a series!

People mention promo and publicity shots of January Jones padded with a baby. Are we sure those were authorized, or were they taken by some random photographer who was near a location, perhaps in Pasadena?

Virtually from the start of Season 3 production it was no secret that the role of Robert "Bobby" Draper had been re-cast. Remember in Season One Bobby#1 only lasted in the Pilot. Then Bobby#2 took over the role for several episodes. Then near the end of Season One and continuing through Season 2 Bobby#3 took the part.

There could be any of several explanations for re-casting now. Perhaps Bobby#3 had a growth spurt and is taller than his older sister Sally#2, who took over from Sally#1 in the Pilot. Possibly the parents of Bobby#3 decided TV was not the right activity for their son or they needed to move from Los Angeles.

Probably we should not assume recasting Bobby means either no time jump or a large time jump. Think back to another series with Becky#1 and Becky#2. Long ago there were Darrin#1 and Darrin#2 on a comedy series about a witch.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2008/08/08/matt-weiner-of-mad-men-the-tv-squad-interview/

The above link will connect you to an interview Matt Weiner gave about a year ago. He was asked a question about the interval between Season 1 and 2. He said he felt an interval of about two years is 'just about right' because it's right for showing the change or differences between two periods of time. He also said he hoped (if it was in his control, I guess) to continue doing this between all the seasons.

For that reason, I feel we can probably count on opening this season up in real time somewhere beyond the Kennedy assassination. (We may see it referred to in flashbacks, though.)

The fact that we see a still of Betty pregnant could be a flashback of the pregnancy announced at the end of Season 2 or scenes of a previous or subsequent pregnancy. The wardrobe changes mentioned because of her pregnancy would not have occurred over a few months, but would have been seen in new fashions over the next few seasons. So, I disagree with those that feel the passage of time will be only a few months from the end of last season to the start of the new season.

There were also many interviews last year that questioned how the historic events during that period would affect subsequent story lines. Matt is not trying to write about the historic events of the day, but is putting forward a story about the lives of people (who could be) affected by those events.

JMHO We shall soon see....!

IIRC the promo still picture of Don & Betty with baby was the first one released for Season 3, and it was from AMC, I think. No way to know if it's a flashback or not, at this point. Her coat was pink, generally a spring color.

Also Sterling Cooper is still consolidating with the Brits, bringing in their CFO, with hints of staff turnover this season. That doesn't sound like a two year jump.

Supposedly people who have seen Episode 1 say there are images in it that make it around 1964. That is all they will say. I guess sworn to secrecy.

The other big thing no one thinks about - assuming the show goes on for 6 years, he can't jump years that much or the actors won't fit their ages.

Well, in past seasons we haven't gone day by day from one episode to the next, more like monthly or by time of year, so we could cover 16-18 months in the upcoming season, allowing for a start somewhere in 1963 and ending near 1965 (or even IN early 1965.) The problem with using historical events in the series as background is that there are SO MANY events. "Change" is an understatement for the 1963-1969 period: culturally, politically, personally.

I thought it was already apparent that they were going to skip over JFK's assassination as it's already been done over and over and jump right into Beatlemania.

LindyK, I agree that would be a problem for the "child actors," but with make-up, hair, padding, etc.--(the myriad of "tricks" the pros have for "aging" actors), I don't see 6-8 years as a big problem.

Besides, as we know, some "lucky" people in real life don't age that much in appearance between their 30's and 40's anyway.

As an aside, but also an example of my point:

I was watching an old "Will and Grace" rerun episode last night and paid attention to the year because John Slatterly guest- appeared as "Sam Truman" -- Will's brother. It was from 1999, and it was a back-to-back double episode in which he had a brief affair with Grace (much to Will's angst, I might add).

Honestly, the intervening 10 years, IMO, have not changed his appearance much. Of course, the fact that his hair was white back then, too, may play a part in my opinion that he doesn't appear a lot older now...

But Roger Sterling (Slatterly) is one who to me has an "age-range" appearance in either direction of a good twenty years. JMO of course, and maybe it's that I find his good looks so striking that I don't notice his age....

...yes, jackie....like many other Maddicts have posted....Silver Fox Deeeeeee-luxe! JS is that!

I saw him on Desperate Housewives reruns (they killed him off so he could do Mad Men!) and he looks as if he could be Roger (esp. a scene when he is wearing a hospital gown in a hosp. bed!) I think that may have been his last job before MM/Roger, not positive, though.

Jackie,yes they could fake-age people, but it kind of takes the believability part away if they are all being made up to look older (and it never really works that well). Matt's all about believability, he has said that many times. I just don't see it. I think I also read somewhere he saw it ending around 1969, although depending on the run, of course....

Newsweek is speculating that it's 1963:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/209530

"It's Going to Be A Tough Year on Mad Men"

No Hippies or Yippies SC PLEASE... the late 60s have been done to death... keep the suits cut, shoes shined, Jack Jones, Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennet singing in the background as long as possible, sparkling chrome on the wide doored cars, sun dresses on hot moms, ignorance being bliss, repression not yet quite exploded in the burbs and the horizon line marking nuclear families beginning to fade, spoken manners no longer hiding all the dirt, politics still a spectators sport on grainy, bar rolling b/w TVs... love it... 1963...

After all tension makes for drama... when it's all hanging out, dropping out, drugged out, free loving and happening and naked and knocked up, the mysteries are over...

P

Well, the east coast was a little behind California re hippies/yippies/EST and all that. It never caught on to the same extent; in real life all our cold weather kind of puts a damper on nudity, at least from say Boston to D.C. Yes, we had Woodstock but that was late (1969) and only three muddy days. Think of it as the exclamation point to the period.

Hippie culture as such had already died out or farmed out to scattered communes. Their essence continues to permeate the culture to this day in the environmental movement, for example, but The Haight's height was 1967's "Summer of Love", followed almost immediately by not-so-harmless users of drugs like meth; what's left is a tourist trap and has been since the late 60s. I believe The History Channel was running a program on this a few weeks ago.

I guess the way I look at hippie culture on the alternate coasts is that if you were an artist or poet, Greenwich Village was the place to be and if you wanted to join a commune, then San Francisco was your destination. With NY and hippies, I think coffeehouses, Warhol, Dylan (he lived there), the Velvet Underground, etc. When I think about CA, I think free love, Golden Gate Park, Kesey and the strange pairing of hippies and Hell's Angels, Grateful Dead, homeless nomads... perhaps NY hippie culture was a bit more materialistic? More artsy and in touch with it's Beat roots? The term hippie supposedly started in the East Village, because it was about being "hip" and hip wannabes.

"Hippie" came out of "hipster/hepster" (hepcats) jazz idiom, and the Beats (beatniks, Beat poets, Beat generation.) "Beat" came from "beat(en) down" alienated from middle class life, the post WWII era beginning in the late 40s. The movement went from east to west, NY (Columbia) to SF and points "on the road."

Where does Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" fit in with all that?

Was it the inspiration for it all (hippies) or a memoir after the fact?