Gosh, you're testy, huh?

Do you go back and forth between AMC and facebook?

I think you have a point, NYC guy. Perhaps one of the weakness of Season Three--and there have been quite a few critical voices raised --is that the
introduction of so many different sub-plots and characters makes the realistic fleshing out of some of of S2's characters impossible in just 13 episodes.

On the other hand, most would agree that in this uniquely MW genre, we sometimes have to extrapolate what might not be shown ...it takes guessing, suppositioning etc.

I agree that it might have been easier to swallow if we had a scene in which we were shown Greg's building up to this decision. (Like maybe first applying for positions outside of NYC -- smaller towns, other states, etc.). But given that we're not going to be shown that much detail for side characters, one option in suspending disbelief would be to assume he's discarded those options for his own reasons -- like not glamourus enough, doesn't pay enough, too much of a "come-down" from the Big City, etc. We know that Greg has emotional problems (to put it mildly)--and a very shakey ego. Also, a man capable of raping his fiance on the floor of her boss' office is likely to make all kinds of erratic decisions throughout his life-- absent a break-through change in his character.

I was actually glad that Greg told Joan to stop acting like she knows everything. I've never liked her much, and hated the way she treated Peggy, especially when Peggy was gaining weight. I thought her smugness needed taking down a peg or two. Not everything runs like Sterling Cooper did when she was there, but she acts like you should be able to apply all of life to her precious ad agency. The case of being a former big fish in a little pond, to my way of thinking.

And could someone please fill me in on why she bashed him in the head with the vase? That struck me (ha ha) as way too extreme for the situation! If I did that every time my husband acted poopy about something, he'd have left me long ago, or been reduced to a vegetable. Way too comic strip for my sensibilities.

>And could someone please fill me in on why she bashed him in the head with the vase?

It's actually quite clear given what he's saying to her at that moment. He's complaining about the fact that he had this dream of being surgeon and did "everything right" in order to achieve it, and now he can't have it. This is all well and good, but then he adds the damning, condosending phrase: "You don't understand what it's like!".

And that's when she gets this look in her eye and bashes him over the head and rightfully so.

Because she had this dream of marrying a doctor who she would help through med school and residency, and he would succeed and they would live happily ever after. This was the very dream he airyly promised and assured her would come true if she married him.

When he failed to get his residency, as promised, however, she didn't whine and complain and say, "You dashed my dreams, I'm out of here!" Instead, she dealt with her disappointment and tried to make the best of it; got a new job, worked with him to succeed at other possibilities. In return, he's undermined himself and every realistic effort she's made. Like Joan or not, she's "done everything right" to help her husband, and put aside her own dreams and wants in the process.

Now he has the gall to say, "You can't understand the disappointment of dashed dreams!" I'd bash him on the head myself! Don't understand dashed dreams? He's one big dashed dream. You bet she understands that kind of disappointment.

I'm with Thirteen on this one.

As it seems that the old "was it rape" debate has kicked back up in the main thread, and for the sake of not trying to start that argument here, whatever you want to call what happened in Don's office, it was not pleasant nor fair to Joan. In addition to his failed promise of success and happiness, he's betrayed any idea of a fair sexual life between the two of them and shot down any of her efforts to do anything about it. I doubt a woman who seems as sexually charged as Joan would ever forget that either.

My guess is that she kept a running tab of his failed promises and rightfully snapped. Nobody can be endlessly supportive for someone as erratic as Greg, and I think Joan gave it the college try.

Luke and Laura? Are they still around?

Sorry. I strongly disagree. Domestic violence isn't justified just because you suddenly realize that your meal ticket doesn't include dessert. Joan knew what he'd done to her physically, yet she married him anyway. She's all sweetness and light when she thinks he's some whiz bang surgeon. But when he fails, she's bossy, critical and vicious! She blind-sided him with a heavy object to the cranium! What's her contribution to this partnership of theirs, anyway, just getting din-din on the table and looking alluring? If she's so ambitious, why isn't she taking classes to better herself instead of hanging around watching soaps? I can't believe there isn't some paying job she could obtain without calling in old favors from former lovers. Maybe she doesn't interview well either.

NYCguy: You clearly haven't been watching the show for all 3 seasons or you would know that it was Roger Sterling, not Bert Cooper, who resisted his old flame in "The Gypsy and The Hobo".

I thought Joan had to make a pretty sizable contribution to their financial situation in order for them to make ends meet, in addition to dinner and hostess duties. I'd say that's contributing a pretty fair amount to the partnership.

While I agree that physical violence is never the answer, I think that what Joan did fits pretty squarely in the prime time drama department and not necessarily the soap opera category. I'm not sure about you, but I like to watch TV where people come unglued mostly because I can't do it in real life. I think it's a pretty human urge to crack people over the head every now and then, but we stop ourselves.

NYCguy, I can understand your frustration to some degree. Mad Men is much more plot-driven this season, whereas in the past it has been more character-driven. That said, it's still an interesting, layered show.

Greg's joining the army didn't seem that far-fetched to me. The guy is impotent (figurativley speaking) and desperate. He messes up everything he does, and he seems to know that if he started over in another town, he'd screw up there too. His lack of confidence is crippling him in this situation. This is in contrast to last season, when the same lack of confidence led him to inexcusably force himself on Joan. That was a rash act, just like joining the army was.

Also, these characters don't know what Vietnam will become. Ten years ago, lots of people saw the army as a great way to get an education and learn useful skills. Few could have predicted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So Greg's behavior, messed up as it is, makes sense to me.

I have to rewatch the scene, but did Joan seem genuinely happy that Greg decided on the Army? She was smiling but seemed to lose it as she was walking away to get her coat...so they could go out to dinner instead of eating soup (?).

If anyone can give a clear and concise definition of "soap opera", I'd love to hear it. No, MM does not resemble "General Hospital", or "Dynasty" or "Dallas", and frankly, it is becoming so cliche to put down a series by calling it a "soap opera" just because it has a continuing storyline. I don't know what you expect...the show is award-winning and has some very fine acting (unlike many soaps)....and there's no organ music balefully droning away in the background here!

@Fifty-Two>Domestic violence isn't justified just because you suddenly realize that your meal ticket doesn't include dessert.

And I strongly disagree with you, and to the way you're trivializing an entire year of Joan's life and all her expectations and hard work in this marriage. You're also thinking in modern terms about this. Which surprises me. You can't complain on the on the one hand that the show isn't historically correct about, say, kids wandering the neighborhood on Halloween, and then haughtily insist that domestic violence is never justified. If we're back in the 60's then these people think like people in the 60's. And I'm afraid they wouldn't understand that.

First, let's make a few things clear. Joan made her bed and has to lie in it. And I think she's realized that after the rape. Yes, of course she married Greg even after that. As a non-virginal girl in her thirties, she undoubtedly saw him as her last chance at marriage and respectability and family, and she wasn't going to throw that away. She also, as so many women then thought, probably believed she caused him to rape her, and that as they were having sexual relations, it wasn't rape. A modern woman would have thought differently. But a woman then would have excused it. No court in the nation, after all, would have upheld it as rape for that reason alone--that they were already having sexual relations.

So while you are right that Joan could have backed out, you're failing to understand why she didn't because you're viewing what happened in modern terms. Joan's choices are much more limited than those of a modern woman and her way of viewing what happened very different.

Next: Greg isn't and has never been Joan's "meal ticket." So far, she's been his. And her aim wasn't that he was going to be her "meal ticket." If she was after a meal ticket, she would have done better to continue on as mistress to a rich ad man. Instead, she had a different dream, one very like Don's. American dream family.

And in those dreams that so many such women had of marrying doctors, they always included the caveat that the wife helped the husband through med school and then they'd be in a partnership of her raising the family and he being the bread-winner. That's not the same as a "meal ticket." That's investment in the future by two people working together and wanting the same thing. It's also the arrangement that Greg wanted and worked out, not Joan.

Third: Greg is not saying there's no dessert. He's saying that he didn't get the promised meal he wanted (including dessert), the one which she's been paying for up to this point. She tries to comfort him and he snaps at her that she doesn't understand how unfair it is that he didn't get his meal. HIS meal.

Last: The words "domestic violence" didn't even exist then. It's very likely that Joan grew up in a neighborhood where couples threw things at each other, hit each other, no police called, no arrests. Common place. And Greg has used force on her.

The point here isn't that domestic violence is ever justified. The point is that her response was not uncommon to those times--any more than Roger putting on blackface was uncommon. Couples in those times got physical and no one thought anything of it. Which makes her reaction, given those times, understandable. And by that I mean, why she finally resorted to violence at that point can be understood. It doesn't have to be liked or accepted by anyone. Just understood.

These characters don't know that things like domestic violence and blackface are never acceptable, or that you don't pick up hitch-hikers, or that a woman can be raped by a man she'd already had sexual relations with. Moralizing to Joan that domestic violence is unacceptable would make no sense to her. She hasn't your insights or knowledge. She is of her time. If you're not willing to understand that, then there's no understanding what occurred between her and Greg.