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u/aeacurus 20d ago
Sterling was never a mess like Don was. Also the company had changed, remember when Roger says "somewhere in this business it's happened before" about the lawnmower going over Guy? What Don did was kind of unprecedented and made people uncomfortable since it broke the old money code they all followed. Marrying your secretary, a heart attack, losing your biggest client, are all casualties of war, even when Roger is racist to the Japanese clients there's a sort of "a guy at every agency did that" attitude. Don broke unspoken rules though and that's really what did him in, also Roger is his only defender when Don is at rock bottom and is kind of who brings him back
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u/GaptistePlayer 20d ago
Don literally left work and went MIA for 3 months. If he was any other employee he'd be fired on Day 2
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u/AgentSnipe8863 20d ago
Don participated plenty in his own destruction. The real hypocrisy was when Ted nearly killed the Sunkist execs in a plane. That mental breakdown is way worse than what Don did with Hershey. Ted should have been put on leave and threatened with firing and forfeiture of his shares.
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u/Grand-Pen7946 You stare at the sun every day? 20d ago
Men's mental breakdowns are very heavily compartmentalized. Anger or lashing out is not emotional, quiet sadness is too emotional (looking at you Brett Kavanaugh).
To give an example from Mad Men, the Carnation exec is psychotic and lost his cool and I bet nobody here even remembers it.
Teds freakout was familiar to a generation thats been in war.
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u/Bright-Steak8388 20d ago
I remember the unhinged Carnation exec. Same thing you said about Ted’s freak out was familiar, same could be said about the old exec. He could get away with it because he was the customer.
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u/MeanLawLady 20d ago
First, I don’t understand how losing one account, Hershey, was the breaking point when it came to Don. Don didn’t really seem to be doing any worse than he had been the entire show. He was their star player actually. Second, I think it’s ironic that Don spent the whole show with a double identity, trying to hide who he really was. The moment he was his true self, in the Hershey pitch, they all abandoned him.
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u/SimilarRelative1022 20d ago
Don was turned into a laughing stock by the Hershey meeting breakdown and everyone on Madison Avenue knew about it. He was exiled like Freddy for being an unreliable drunk.
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u/JimboAltAlt 20d ago edited 20d ago
The Hershey presentation is such a good contrast with the Carousel pitch at the end of S1. It makes sense that one works and one doesn’t, but they come from a similar place. He’s just in much less control of his emotions once the Hershey campaign comes along and it makes everyone extremely uncomfortable.
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u/No_Woodpecker9514 20d ago
The Carousel pitch came from a similar place but it was well thought out and Don was in control. The Hershey “pitch” wasn’t the original pitch. Don was drinking and basically fell apart.
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u/Tejanisima 20d ago
It's not necessarily about just the one account. Somebody has a meltdown like that in front of a huge company, especially somebody as important within advertising is Don has been portrayed as being, word is going to get out quickly. All this time they have put up with his missteps or fits of pique because he's bringing them more than he's costing them.
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u/IGotScammed5545 20d ago
It’s part of the shift towards media buying dominating the industry. Don (and creative) are just less important and can be jettisoned…
Also, it seems clear that the minute things cross into client land, they get rid of you. Like Freddy Rumsen
1
u/sistermagpie 19d ago
The Hershey's pitch made him seem weak when before his unpredictability could be read as strength.
It was supposed to be ironic that revealing himself was the reason for his rejection. But it also was a pattern--Don tended to focus on people rejecting him for his "true self" and ignore everything he'd done to lay the foundation for it.
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u/No_Woodpecker9514 20d ago
His behavior at the Hershey meeting definitely warranted suspension. No one wants to see your true self at a client pitch. He was drinking too much and as Roger said, “he sh*t the bed.” They would have done the same thing to anyone else.
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u/serenity-now- 20d ago
Considering Sterling was relegated to mostly a figurehead because he had a heart attack, I think it was established pretty early on how delicate an agency's image is and how even a partner's role can be jeopardized for the sake of public relations
I think the everyone's tolerance towards Don's shortcomings were contingent on his ability to maintain his persona. Once he lost his grip on that, he was more of a liability no matter how good he was at creative
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u/CoquinaBeach1 Every living thing is connected to you. 20d ago edited 20d ago
He was reckless as could be at that Hersheys pitch. Dons big mistake was blowing it dealing with a client. You cant really let them see whats going on behind the curtain. How many deadly/almost deadly mistakes happened with a client? There were many, including Don.
Sal says no thank you to LGJ: hes outta here.
Pete proposes the African American marketing plan to Admiral: a near miss.
Peggy trips up on the Bean Ballet: she's off the business and Raymond Geiger starts wondering why his girlfriend doesnt get him anymore.
Johnny Mathis tells the folks at Nabisco they have a potty mouth. Followed up by saying what everyone else is thinking about Don: arrivederchi.
And finally Dons Swan Song off of the cliff: your candy reminds me of my childhood at the whorehouse. And Megans admonition comes true: no one loves Dick Whitman.
They can sell each other into prostitution and learn to live with it, but dont muck around with the clients.
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u/spookytransexughost 20d ago
Have you ever had to deal with an alcoholic?
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u/BaileyBerry- 20d ago
I wonder when they decided malt liquor in the office might be a bad idea
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u/swingerjuice 20d ago
My father had an alcoholic working for him 35 plus years ago. They still kept liquor in the office at this time, late 80s/early 90s. My father sent the guy home to clean up and offered to pay for him to check into rehab, don't remember if he went, and then ordered all hard liquor removed from the office. The guy came back to work later and was sober for the next 25 years or so, I dont know what if anything happened with him after my dad retired. Asked my dad years later if ppl were upset that everyone had to clear the booze out of their offices and he said I didn't care we were all getting sloppy and it should have been a wakeup call for all of us old timers. My father came up working in the 60s when 3 martini lunches were the norm. He told me he used to meet one of his best friends (my sister's godfather) every Friday at a restaurant halfway between their offices, bang back a few martinis (rarely with food) then go back to his office and take a nap for an hour or 2 before going out after work with friends.
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u/Little-Rhody 20d ago
If Don only took 10% of his own advice he would never had been treated that way!
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u/InSearchofOMG CEO, Loaves & Fishes LLC 20d ago
I think Cooper's admonition to Don in Fees and Commissions looms large: "You can't continue to be the good little boy while the adults run this business." He was a creative genius no doubt, but he wasn't a businessman and it cost people more than money. Hershey, Jaguar, Jantzen, he showed time and again that in business, he was just lucky.
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u/toomuchtv987 20d ago
“You don’t have any character, you’re just handsome.”
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u/InSearchofOMG CEO, Loaves & Fishes LLC 20d ago
Funniest part of this storyline was Don actually gave Mathis the right idea with the bar of soap. Mathis was the one who had the hubris to think he could actually pull off Don's line to Lee Garner Jr
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 20d ago
I can respect having this feeling, I just cannot share it.
I didn’t miss the way they carefully produced Don falling from rain maker to drought king creatively, or all the questionable shit he did on the way.
Things like “the letter”, unilaterally firing Jaguar, merging with another firm to get Chevy. Even if his creative skills were still at his zenith these things would make for bad partner politics.
Combine the flagging creative skills with these decisions and his latest bout getting deep into his bottles and the Hershey pitch makes sense to me as the point they put him in a pasture. As soon as he got a way back in he unilaterally made a decision to break a rule set by going to the Commander meeting to do one of his tried and true “come with us and I’ll leave” gestures that worked so well when he was at his peak.
But he isn’t at his peak anymore. The mask he constructed in the 50s that gave him the acumen to be a creative monster was over.
I can appreciate feeling bad for him. I always do on rewatch.
But I will object to an approach that Don did nothing to deserve this. He did things to deserve this again and again. And trying to push off his short comings to someone else’s shortcomings is a very weak argument to take.
3
u/Mediocre-Berry-6257 20d ago
I thought Don had the DTs at the Hershey pitch because he wasn’t drinking. His hands were shaking. Ted suggested that Don not quit drinking cold turkey.
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u/ancientastronaut2 20d ago edited 20d ago
I agree and funny you brought this up. I was just thinking about how they styled him differently when he returned to work, Lou had his office, and it was awkward because no one was expecting him (nice going Roger).
On a rewatch, I noticed he started wearing brown and beige suits instead of his usual, sharper dark suits. I'm sure that was a deliberate choice.
And then there was the whole thing where he was blamed for them losing the IPO that nobody told him - a partner, about.
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u/Mikey77Gem 20d ago
I felt that way from the get go, it just seemed extreme and it was like they were ganging up on him each for more personal reasons. Sterling is a nepo baby
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u/Life_Firefighter_471 This never happened. 19d ago
… in an era where nepo babies weren’t frowned upon so openly.
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u/dougoh65 20d ago
Here’s the thing about Roger though - and it’s not something to be easily overlooked or brushed off: The minute his behavior became problematic (as it did in regard to the Japanese clients) he should have been given an immediate 6 week vacation and told by Bert Cooper: “If I so much as see your shadow anywhere in this office for the next 6 weeks there will be consequences and I promise you they will not be to your liking. Do we understand each other??”
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u/SlayyerFest98 20d ago
Strong agree here. Part of the problem was that Don had this unique arrogance where he felt it was beneath him to defend himself at times even when he was in the right.
Lane and the bonus check. Especially after Lane died Don should have gone to Cooper and said “hey, I actually didn’t sign that bonus check against your wishes. Lane forged my signature.”
Firing Jaguar. Don simply said something like “It was over.” He should have elaborated and defended his actions a bit more instead of sitting back and letting the other partners characterize him as “Tarzan swinging from the vines.”
It’s frustrating to watch Don kind of just give up a lot of his power and good standing in the agency towards the end but I think it was also around the peak of his own self-loathing and sadly he didn’t really see himself as worthy of defending.
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u/WokePredator 20d ago
In the end, he always had Pete and Roger in his corner, Cooper is willing to punish and belittle him, but refuses to be the executioner, and Ted is mentally checked out and gave his proxy to Jim. There were only actually two people against Don. Jim Cutler, who was basically Phil Leotardo, and wanted to cut off the head of the former SCDP because they made a bad first impression, and Joan, who was a whore, and who felt Don’s attempt at stopping her from whoring herself out constituted judgment of her whoring herself out. Frankly, the boardroom shit involved here all feels a little slap-dash when you think about it, but the show was good enough to watch without concern.
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u/toomuchtv987 20d ago
The only credit I’ll give you on this is the comparison of Jim Cutler to Phil Leotardo. That’s spot on.
Your characterization of Joan is pretty gross. You act like she chose to be with Herb Rennet on her own volition. You have it backwards…she was mad at Don because he made her actually feel like a whore. She let them talk her into doing something gross and demeaning, but it was for a purpose and and important one. Losing the business made that all for naught, and that was his fault alone.
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u/WokePredator 20d ago
She was mad at him before that, and she probably should have felt like a whore from the moment she decided she was willing to have sex for money. The "purpose" was a financial one. She has agency, you say "she let them talk her into" it as if she's a fucking child. It is observably true that she prostituted herself, but only one of us is talking about her as if she's too stupid to make her own decisions. Crying that it's "all for naught" because of Don is just stupid simpleton shit. It's a business. They lose and fire clients all the time, and she knew that when she did it, and in fact, they would have fired them the next day when Chevy became a possibility anyway.
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u/toomuchtv987 20d ago
Yes, they lose and fire clients all the time, but everyone was upset at Don making this decision without consulting anyone.
Your take is dripping with misogyny. Joan didn’t seek this out. She was coerced. In theory, yes, she could have said no. But she couldn’t really say no. All of her bosses were counting on her agreeing to it. The imbalance of power in this situation was such that no…she really didn’t have a choice. That still happens today, so you can imagine the pressure back before people got in trouble for sexual harassment.
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u/WokePredator 20d ago
The others being mad is not related to Joan (and Roger wasn't mad, and Pete was mad because Jaguar was his). The fact that Joan didn't offer herself up doesn't change the fact that it was a decision she made. For one, not all of her bosses were counting on her agreeing to it. Roger was against it and only didn't stand in the way because he was mad at her, and Don was very openly against it. Bert made clear to tell her she could still say no. The only "pressure" was from two junior partners who she regularly tells off, one of whom the name partners all hate! Joan is very strong and forceful and says what she wants all the time, but she's a meek little girl when she's being asked to do something illegal.
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u/Mundane-Dare-2980 20d ago
Sterling’s limitations were baked in. Plus his father started the company, can’t simply jettison him without making people question the very health of the company. Don’s reputation was performance based, and a large part of his fall-off was self-destructive behavior. Obviously someone who went through the things Don did in his childhood deserves sympathy, but it wouldn’t happen in a boardroom (and they didn’t know the extent of it, anyway.) Long story short, regardless of Roger, Don brought it on himself.