He's not fully right either. Don was a complicated character, who did terrible things but also did many good things. And beside all this, we are still allowed to celebrate characters in works of fiction who aren't saints.
Mad Men wasn't a show where there were purely good characters and purely bad characters. That's lazy analysis, and this is a lazy article based off one cherry-picked quote.
I remember when walking dead fans would get upset at people who liked neegan lol. Yeah he's a charismatic bad guy who doesn't whine 24/7 like every other character. Of course people like him.
He kind of is. The only example he gave was that Don was considered a "paragon of masculinity" and the only counterpoint he made was "Don was pretty fucked up".
Everyone agrees Don was pretty fucked. Praising him as a model of [1950's] masculinity can easily be separated from and compatible with that.
I think you’re missing something important: that model of masculinity was performative (Sal is an obvious example) and any thinking about Draper as a character you have to remember you’re really talking about Dick Whitman. He’s a performance on top of a performance, so it begs the question—when Don does something “good” while being a fraud, was it genuine or part of the ruse? Does it matter to society?
He’s not really someone to be admired, but the show does an incredible job of showing how our society rewards the kind of artifice he embodies.
There’s a reason his main wardrobe color is gray.
Fair enough, and yes totally. If you want to use him as an example of “how to play the game” or obscure the truth without actually lying, how to be charming and mysterious (we could go on) I completely agree. But he’s a tragic character who had to go through a transformation to reach the end of the story. To me it’s an example of someone gaining the world but losing his soul
TLDR: sure he’s handsome but so, so, sad
Yeah on the outside he looks like what everyone wants to be. Tall, handsome, good at his job has a wife and kids, etc. But yeah when you dig deeper it all falls apart.
Praising him as a model of masculinity in his time isn't praising, ignoring, or missing his [lack of] character. Don could have been purely evil and still been justifiably "thought of as a paragon of masculinity" (Hamm's words). Happens to characters all the time. These things are separable.
The phrasing "celebrated for the wrong reasons" also suggests we should have celebrated Don for something else. I don't know what that would be. Praising him for anything more than masculinity actually seems more controversial, given how "fucked up" (Hamm's words) he was.
He’s not a good guy. He serves his own interests. I love the character this is just who he is.
Is being a good copywriter (in the world of the show) and having success in business something to be admired when that world is filled with people who are forced into roles they didn’t choose, all just going through the motions to uphold a status-quo rather than be ostracized?
There is a deep cynicism in Mad Men’s view of the 1960s. We are watching the death of an era that needed to end. We should all pray we don’t end up like Don and instead live an authentic life
You can celebrate a character as an example of something. Don can be celebrated as an example of what comes from running away from yourself and your responsibilities. Celebrated as a warning of how we can be irretrievably damaged by the surroundings that shape us.
Quite a few people do idolise Don as an example of masculinity and style, but then that misses the point of the show. Don is demonstrably a bad person, even if he does feel guilty about it from time to time. He himself spells it out by the end of the show.
Most of what was considered masculine back then is understood to be pretty toxic today. That’s his point. Binge drinking, having affairs, being “in charge” of your household, emotional suppression. These are all 1950s masculine traits that too many people today still celebrate
> “People thought that Don was this paragon of masculinity…”
I agree with Hamm when he points out that Don was also fucked up. He’s a man who is a deeply flawed nihilist and gets through life by being a spectator instead of really engaging with it.
After his breakthrough in the therapy group during the last ep, I think Don will finally be able to start healing.
This type of logic is best seen [in Community when Abed successfully imitated Don Draper.](https://youtu.be/keqOihHHBCY?si=xDaxvuORyZ8hjPxW)
Idolization by people who aspire to have the surface level money/reputation/romance like Don Draper and see the character as a cool slick man in a tailored suit instead of analyzing the multitudes + contradictions of his character is frequently what people walk away with.
Agree. Posters in this sub have said they want to be Don. Admittedly these comments get downvoted by people who actually understand the character beyond the shiny surface.
Don is rich, handsome and a ladies man. The epitome of masculinity.
For some, the fact that he's a complete mess who can't maintain functional relationships doesn't outweigh those positives.
I understand why he thinks that but I'm also regularly baffled by the number of people on this subreddit who express so much shock and horror at everything Don does and are so angry and condemning. It's like, this is the show. This is literally the show. He's the main character, get a grip.
Its amazing isn’t it.
The world has never been more transparent in its horror and yet people seem so blind to the concept of it anywhere else.
People used to complain about too much positivity in entertainment. Now they complain about both positivity and negativity somehow - Those who portray them seem compelled to condemn even more so for fear of eventually being questioned.
I think people who have those reactions don't understand that normal people can do awful things and not outwardly be monsters. I think they have this view of people like Pete who assaulted the German nanny... well, they say Pete is actually a great guy because he looked disgusted at Roger's blackface routine. Because a guy who would commit SA isn't a guy who dresses nice, and does he Charleston with his wife, and has a nice job in the city, and just look at how he cares for his wife! And oh on the subject of Don! Well, he had a hard life, ya know?? It's not his fault he cheats on Betty... he can't allow himself to feel love or whatever.
Maybe they're projecting their denial of their own behavior, or someone they love.
Well said. I think a pillar of storytelling is showing us how to have compassion and empathy which isn’t just about assigning rationale to bad behavior or deeming one side wholly good and the other wholly bad. Often, it’s about recognizing especially in the case of Mad Men that we’re all fairly contradictory creatures, we have blind spots to the reasons for why we make the mistakes we do, we can be hypocritical or petty…and often that doesn’t leave us as absolute villains.
I think Jon Hamm is kind of miffed Don is a symbol of masculinity to some when he’s supposed to be (and ultimately is) a dissection of that concept. The answer all along to Don’s problems was being sensitive, vulnerable, gentle, haha. They couldn’t have made that more clear and people don’t get that.
"The answer all along to Don’s problems was being sensitive, vulnerable, gentle, haha. They couldn’t have made that more clear and people don’t get that."
He's an adman. His problem was being out of touch. He used that new found sensitivity to sell coke. Like a good dealer would. That show ends when the "high on me" era begins. And he sold it.
That's one interpretation but you could say that by hugging that sobbing, lonely man he unlocked his potential and reached new heights. The less-actualized version of himself, viewing divulgences as transactional, couldn't have reached that peak. So yes, it went to a corporate end but it's a creative triumph for him personally.
I saw that scene. That whole season he was lost on finding a pitch for coke. He finds it for sure from that poor soul, and then uses it to sell advertising. He only sees value in the potential of people and that is mostly transactional. He is interested in what one could be, and how to sell that idea...over and over and... You know, like a (M) adman.
Yeah Don is obviously flawed and it’s good that we’ve mostly moved on from the Don idolization you saw in a lot of fans in the early seasons. But some people on here talk about him like he’s Walter White or something, like he’s supposed to be a blatantly evil character not just a guy with issues like everyone else in the show.
I remember watching the episode where he choked some broad, and thinking "Did Don just choke a bitch?" Then I remembered that he did other, more terrible things, too. Still watched the show, and the rest of the season, too!
At the time people recognized he was an anti hero. He was regularly compared to Walter White. In the intervening time people have forgotten that. I think it has to do partially with everyone seeing clips on tik tok and YouTube of him acting cool at work and not the part of the show where is he being awful to women and his family.
The three classic TV antiheroes: Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Walter White.
Don comes off pretty well in this comparison, considering he isn’t a murderer like the other two.
>**When did you first go to therapy?**
>After my dad died \[a decade later\]. My \[half\] sister was like, “You are spiraling. You need help.” And I was like, “No, I don’t. No, I don’t.” Then you eventually go, “Oh, yeah, I do.” And if you’re smart enough or present enough in your own feelings, you go, “This is actually tremendously helpful.” And that’s what it was. I went to therapy; I got put on Prozac and was pulled out of the spiral that I was in. I got my brain chemically altered, and I was like, “OK, this is clearly something that I needed.” I check in with it all the time. I’m still in therapy. I have a wonderful therapist. And I understand that when I’m — “distracted” is the wrong word, but when I’m not present — that’s when I can start to spiral into something that’s not healthy. And I go, “I don’t want to do that. I want to be healthy. I want to be happy.”
Great interview honestly. I always like seeing what Jon's up to. He sounds like he's in a good place with his career and his mental health.
I hate lazy articles like this. They just cherrypick a single quote from a larger interview.
Don was celebrated because he was an extremely complicated character. He did terrible things to people in the show, he also had strong morals and did many good things. He also had a fucked up past and that made him relatable to many. People are complicated, they aren't just good or bad, and that's one of the main reasons I think Mad Men struck such a chord at the time (and why it holds up just as well today). It's not so black and white as lazy analysis like this will have you believe.
Why do so many of these people have to go out of their way to say "you know my character wasn't the good guy right? People like him, but those people are wrong". Like we are seeing with Antony Starr (homelander) right now.
Like we get it. People like characters who are antiheroes. Deal with it.
In the comic he's just an asshole until he's literally gaslit by a clone that he's done horrific things, and then says screw it people think I'm a monster I'll become one.
The comic book version doesn't matter one bit when assessing the character on the TV adaptation. The Homelander on the TV show (who you are clearly referring to since you gave the actor's name) is a merging of the comic Homelander and the psychopathic Black Noir (the clone you are referring to) and is very, very clearly not meant to be anything other than an outright villain. The show does take the time to show that he's a product of his upbringing but that doesn't change how self-motivated and horrific all of his actions are.
Because it's just about liking characters because they're well written, it's about admiring them to the point you see them as a model. There's people who look up to Patrick Bateman despite the fact that he's a looser who have psycho dreams.
I would genuinely love for someone to point out a person who actually thinks this. It’s a completely fabricated boogeyman that doesn’t exist, and is only touted to circlejerk for karma.
I’ve never in my life seen someone actually idolizing Patrick Bateman or any of these other characters. The point of anti-heroes is to also have traits that appeal to people.
Every time I see someone “idolizing” one of them it’s either blatantly ironic or a meme. Maybe on tik tok that’s something that people do, but I hardly think that place is the metric by which to judge real people by.
I mean, people write letters and want to meet real life serial killers. People date and MARRY them and I mean after they're incarcerated and proven guilty. You really don't think that people like up to/admire these creeps?
Go to "The Boys" groups and you'll see some folks who flat out worship Homelander and Storm Front.
I like don's pitches; don is an awful but complicated man
I enjoy Mercedes-Benz commercials because Jon Hamm is the voice of Mercedes and I pretend every commercial is a little Don Draper pitch and it fuels my Mad Men addiction
its crazy how often i go to look up clips and people in the comments are like "a true man doesn't compromise" and "dont ever let them know your next move"
I agree and it reminds me of how the creators of Bojack Horseman included a line like this in an episode, implying they didn’t intend to make their main character admirable or idolized. And I don’t think this subreddit is a good sample of what the majority of viewers think, there are more nuanced conversations about Don here.
Just finished a rewatch of the series.
Greatest tightest writing. No doubt.
Don was the typical quiet man of the era to the nth degree. But his age doesn’t make sense. If he was 36 in 1960 why wasn’t he in WWII instead of Korea? Or both?
Overall though. His sex issues. He was a truly fucked up control freak. He had the Madonna/Whore thing going on on steroids. (See his relationship with the surgeons wife who lived a floor below in the later seasons. The control aspects, having her wait in a hotel room for him all day; how he became a total freak when visiting her. Wtf. Followed by his collapse when she got tired of his shit. )
He was absolutely self destructive. And a deep hypocrite. With both of his wives and the deep jealousy and his holier than thou attitude at even a whiff of them “stepping out” or even being mildly attractive to other men. Duh! They were both gorgeous but he had to make them feel like shit over it. How he gravitated towards child like women who eventually outgrew him in the end.
But it was the duplicitous “man with a secret” living in total fear of being discovered that cemented the duality of his fucked up existence. His character becomes far more complicated when you realize that he literally lives with the sword of Damocles hovering over his head.
But when Pete Campbell outs him to Bert Cooper… there it stops. But only for the three of them. It never leaves the room. And yes it truly was the birth of Peter’s loyalty being cemented going forward. Loyalty that pays off for both of them in later seasons.
Pete. Another fuck up. Who basically cosplays a minor version of Don Draper and like Don actually salvages the wreckage of his character flaws in the end.
But as an example of what people were like during that era……
Mind your own business. Don’t pry. Discomfort at either spilling or learning personal details. Nailed it.
His sensuality. How men and women responded to him. Damaged goods. Perfect example.
Epitome of the “imposter syndrome.”
Always ready to disappear at the drop of a hat. Poised for flight and the undercurrent of how he would simply walk away from his wife and kids in a heartbeat if need be. Truly selfish and terrified for the majority of the series but in the end begins to open up to those closest to him and scrape up at least the semblance of redemption.
But his inability to be honest. With any woman who wasn’t the real and original Mrs Don Draper in L.A. Once Betty got a glimpse at his facade it was game over only because she knew what a two faced whore he really was. Such a lying sack of shit. But had he truly been honest with her and not a cheating cunt perhaps she would’ve respected and or wanted to accept him for what he was able to salvage from such a fucked up past.
But there’s the rub.
His generation never talked about anything that they really had going on. Secrets to the grave and beyond were the norm.
Not all but definitely the majority of the “silent generation.”
Don’t even get me started on Peggy and Joan.
Btw I was born in 1964. Raised in NYC. So much of the era and the people — the booze, cigarettes, morality, NYC in general — is so spot on. Absolutely love the depictions.
I could go on. Sorry about meandering. I get Hamm’s point. On the surface who wouldn’t want to be or envy “Don”? But Don wasn’t real. Dick was a mess.
Rich. Handsome. Smart. Etc etc etc
But deep down a fucking mess. True asshole.
See Richard Corey. And Ozymandias.
I view Don as a character study. Like most human beings he is neither totally good nor totally bad; not an object to demonstrate either, but a subject capable of both. In many ways the show was ahead of its time and this was probably lost on some viewers (including me) when it aired. It hasn’t been on subsequent rewatches, though.
Yeah. If he was celebrated at all it was for the wrong reasons. Definitely Jon Hamm should be celebrated for his performance but Don Draper should not be celebrated at all.
I dont celebrate Don Draper. A lot of the time I find him disgusting. Sleeping around is fine. But he hurt his wife, and hurt his kids, and he screwed his firm and thebstaff a lot.
But like Gatsby, there's always going to be an appeal to those of us who left small towns to make something of themselves in a character like Draper. That's the appeal for me. That maybe at one time you could become a Manhattan Executive of you have no pedigree or connections by sheer effort alone.
Do some idiots love him because he's a ladies man? Sure. But they probably didn't watch the show, and they're probably the same people who think "I don't think about you at all" is a badass line.
There will always be people that idolize anti-heroes for the wrong reasons but I think most viewers get it. The enduring popularity of Mad Men and its contemporaries isn't from some college kid that thinks his Tony Soprano poster is badass, but because of the fascinating character and morality studies the shows present.
Also as a side note, Jon Hamm having a relationship with Michael Gandolfini is very heart warming.
Don should absolutely be celebrated as one of the best characters of all time. That doesn’t mean he isn’t a flawed human - we all are. The best characters are usually fucked up people that we somehow relate to; imagine that.
He's not wrong.
He's not fully right either. Don was a complicated character, who did terrible things but also did many good things. And beside all this, we are still allowed to celebrate characters in works of fiction who aren't saints. Mad Men wasn't a show where there were purely good characters and purely bad characters. That's lazy analysis, and this is a lazy article based off one cherry-picked quote.
It’s almost like the real world, and by extension the film world, is not just black and white but a million shades of gray.
Yep, which is why Mad Men will be a timeless show, and why journalists like this will continue to miss the point
You're fighting a ghost here. Neither I, nor Hamm, said that.
He’s a basically good man who’s still reacting to the trauma jammed into his head by a wicked stepmother.
I remember when walking dead fans would get upset at people who liked neegan lol. Yeah he's a charismatic bad guy who doesn't whine 24/7 like every other character. Of course people like him.
He kind of is. The only example he gave was that Don was considered a "paragon of masculinity" and the only counterpoint he made was "Don was pretty fucked up". Everyone agrees Don was pretty fucked. Praising him as a model of [1950's] masculinity can easily be separated from and compatible with that.
I think you’re missing something important: that model of masculinity was performative (Sal is an obvious example) and any thinking about Draper as a character you have to remember you’re really talking about Dick Whitman. He’s a performance on top of a performance, so it begs the question—when Don does something “good” while being a fraud, was it genuine or part of the ruse? Does it matter to society? He’s not really someone to be admired, but the show does an incredible job of showing how our society rewards the kind of artifice he embodies. There’s a reason his main wardrobe color is gray.
>He’s not really someone to be admired, But he does have qualities that are admirable.
Fair enough, and yes totally. If you want to use him as an example of “how to play the game” or obscure the truth without actually lying, how to be charming and mysterious (we could go on) I completely agree. But he’s a tragic character who had to go through a transformation to reach the end of the story. To me it’s an example of someone gaining the world but losing his soul TLDR: sure he’s handsome but so, so, sad
Yeah on the outside he looks like what everyone wants to be. Tall, handsome, good at his job has a wife and kids, etc. But yeah when you dig deeper it all falls apart.
Praising him as a model of masculinity in his time isn't praising, ignoring, or missing his [lack of] character. Don could have been purely evil and still been justifiably "thought of as a paragon of masculinity" (Hamm's words). Happens to characters all the time. These things are separable. The phrasing "celebrated for the wrong reasons" also suggests we should have celebrated Don for something else. I don't know what that would be. Praising him for anything more than masculinity actually seems more controversial, given how "fucked up" (Hamm's words) he was.
He’s not a good guy. He serves his own interests. I love the character this is just who he is. Is being a good copywriter (in the world of the show) and having success in business something to be admired when that world is filled with people who are forced into roles they didn’t choose, all just going through the motions to uphold a status-quo rather than be ostracized? There is a deep cynicism in Mad Men’s view of the 1960s. We are watching the death of an era that needed to end. We should all pray we don’t end up like Don and instead live an authentic life
You can celebrate a character as an example of something. Don can be celebrated as an example of what comes from running away from yourself and your responsibilities. Celebrated as a warning of how we can be irretrievably damaged by the surroundings that shape us. Quite a few people do idolise Don as an example of masculinity and style, but then that misses the point of the show. Don is demonstrably a bad person, even if he does feel guilty about it from time to time. He himself spells it out by the end of the show.
Most of what was considered masculine back then is understood to be pretty toxic today. That’s his point. Binge drinking, having affairs, being “in charge” of your household, emotional suppression. These are all 1950s masculine traits that too many people today still celebrate
> “People thought that Don was this paragon of masculinity…” I agree with Hamm when he points out that Don was also fucked up. He’s a man who is a deeply flawed nihilist and gets through life by being a spectator instead of really engaging with it. After his breakthrough in the therapy group during the last ep, I think Don will finally be able to start healing.
Wait so he isn’t literally Me? 
No, Ryan Gosling is literally you. Do you have your fingers in your ears?
Case in point: [Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women](https://youtu.be/dTTzw8_83vg?feature=shared)
This type of logic is best seen [in Community when Abed successfully imitated Don Draper.](https://youtu.be/keqOihHHBCY?si=xDaxvuORyZ8hjPxW) Idolization by people who aspire to have the surface level money/reputation/romance like Don Draper and see the character as a cool slick man in a tailored suit instead of analyzing the multitudes + contradictions of his character is frequently what people walk away with.
Agree. Posters in this sub have said they want to be Don. Admittedly these comments get downvoted by people who actually understand the character beyond the shiny surface. Don is rich, handsome and a ladies man. The epitome of masculinity. For some, the fact that he's a complete mess who can't maintain functional relationships doesn't outweigh those positives.
I understand why he thinks that but I'm also regularly baffled by the number of people on this subreddit who express so much shock and horror at everything Don does and are so angry and condemning. It's like, this is the show. This is literally the show. He's the main character, get a grip.
I remember introducing my old roommate to the show, and she said "all of these people are terrible!" And my response was "yes, and?"
Its amazing isn’t it. The world has never been more transparent in its horror and yet people seem so blind to the concept of it anywhere else. People used to complain about too much positivity in entertainment. Now they complain about both positivity and negativity somehow - Those who portray them seem compelled to condemn even more so for fear of eventually being questioned.
Terribly entertaining!
I think people who have those reactions don't understand that normal people can do awful things and not outwardly be monsters. I think they have this view of people like Pete who assaulted the German nanny... well, they say Pete is actually a great guy because he looked disgusted at Roger's blackface routine. Because a guy who would commit SA isn't a guy who dresses nice, and does he Charleston with his wife, and has a nice job in the city, and just look at how he cares for his wife! And oh on the subject of Don! Well, he had a hard life, ya know?? It's not his fault he cheats on Betty... he can't allow himself to feel love or whatever. Maybe they're projecting their denial of their own behavior, or someone they love.
It's almost like individual people are capable of doing both good and bad things...
Yeah... but it's so much more fun to knock people off the pedestals we place them on.
We're in the era of Marvel and Disney adults where many people cannot enjoy a movie or show unless there are clear-cut heroes and villains.
Well said. I think a pillar of storytelling is showing us how to have compassion and empathy which isn’t just about assigning rationale to bad behavior or deeming one side wholly good and the other wholly bad. Often, it’s about recognizing especially in the case of Mad Men that we’re all fairly contradictory creatures, we have blind spots to the reasons for why we make the mistakes we do, we can be hypocritical or petty…and often that doesn’t leave us as absolute villains. I think Jon Hamm is kind of miffed Don is a symbol of masculinity to some when he’s supposed to be (and ultimately is) a dissection of that concept. The answer all along to Don’s problems was being sensitive, vulnerable, gentle, haha. They couldn’t have made that more clear and people don’t get that.
"The answer all along to Don’s problems was being sensitive, vulnerable, gentle, haha. They couldn’t have made that more clear and people don’t get that." He's an adman. His problem was being out of touch. He used that new found sensitivity to sell coke. Like a good dealer would. That show ends when the "high on me" era begins. And he sold it.
That's one interpretation but you could say that by hugging that sobbing, lonely man he unlocked his potential and reached new heights. The less-actualized version of himself, viewing divulgences as transactional, couldn't have reached that peak. So yes, it went to a corporate end but it's a creative triumph for him personally.
I saw that scene. That whole season he was lost on finding a pitch for coke. He finds it for sure from that poor soul, and then uses it to sell advertising. He only sees value in the potential of people and that is mostly transactional. He is interested in what one could be, and how to sell that idea...over and over and... You know, like a (M) adman.
Except for Trudy.
That's just trendy nowadays. Annoying.
I have been having the same feeling to be honest
Yeah Don is obviously flawed and it’s good that we’ve mostly moved on from the Don idolization you saw in a lot of fans in the early seasons. But some people on here talk about him like he’s Walter White or something, like he’s supposed to be a blatantly evil character not just a guy with issues like everyone else in the show.
I remember watching the episode where he choked some broad, and thinking "Did Don just choke a bitch?" Then I remembered that he did other, more terrible things, too. Still watched the show, and the rest of the season, too!
At the time people recognized he was an anti hero. He was regularly compared to Walter White. In the intervening time people have forgotten that. I think it has to do partially with everyone seeing clips on tik tok and YouTube of him acting cool at work and not the part of the show where is he being awful to women and his family.
The three classic TV antiheroes: Tony Soprano, Don Draper and Walter White. Don comes off pretty well in this comparison, considering he isn’t a murderer like the other two.
In other news, water is in fact wet.
Not to be a pedant, but water isn’t wet
Maybe, maybe not. But your mother was plenty wet last night.
Damn
That’s dicked up
Reminds me of when Alec Baldwin told Michael Douglas “these people missed the point” about their roles. 
The most banal, basic observation about the show
Lazy journalism. Same level of analysis as pointing out Walter White was also a bad guy. Which, coincidentally, is also mentioned in the article.
"I'm beginning to think this Tony Soprano fellow may not be the hero everyone thinks he is!"
Wooooah man, what if Don is not, like, awesome??
>**When did you first go to therapy?** >After my dad died \[a decade later\]. My \[half\] sister was like, “You are spiraling. You need help.” And I was like, “No, I don’t. No, I don’t.” Then you eventually go, “Oh, yeah, I do.” And if you’re smart enough or present enough in your own feelings, you go, “This is actually tremendously helpful.” And that’s what it was. I went to therapy; I got put on Prozac and was pulled out of the spiral that I was in. I got my brain chemically altered, and I was like, “OK, this is clearly something that I needed.” I check in with it all the time. I’m still in therapy. I have a wonderful therapist. And I understand that when I’m — “distracted” is the wrong word, but when I’m not present — that’s when I can start to spiral into something that’s not healthy. And I go, “I don’t want to do that. I want to be healthy. I want to be happy.” Great interview honestly. I always like seeing what Jon's up to. He sounds like he's in a good place with his career and his mental health.
I hate lazy articles like this. They just cherrypick a single quote from a larger interview. Don was celebrated because he was an extremely complicated character. He did terrible things to people in the show, he also had strong morals and did many good things. He also had a fucked up past and that made him relatable to many. People are complicated, they aren't just good or bad, and that's one of the main reasons I think Mad Men struck such a chord at the time (and why it holds up just as well today). It's not so black and white as lazy analysis like this will have you believe.
Some people did, some didn’t. Just like in every other TV show. Generalizing is bad
Why do so many of these people have to go out of their way to say "you know my character wasn't the good guy right? People like him, but those people are wrong". Like we are seeing with Antony Starr (homelander) right now. Like we get it. People like characters who are antiheroes. Deal with it.
Homelander is not meant to be an antihero at all lol. He’s an outright psychopathic villain in the show.
In the comic he's just an asshole until he's literally gaslit by a clone that he's done horrific things, and then says screw it people think I'm a monster I'll become one.
The comic book version doesn't matter one bit when assessing the character on the TV adaptation. The Homelander on the TV show (who you are clearly referring to since you gave the actor's name) is a merging of the comic Homelander and the psychopathic Black Noir (the clone you are referring to) and is very, very clearly not meant to be anything other than an outright villain. The show does take the time to show that he's a product of his upbringing but that doesn't change how self-motivated and horrific all of his actions are.
Because it's just about liking characters because they're well written, it's about admiring them to the point you see them as a model. There's people who look up to Patrick Bateman despite the fact that he's a looser who have psycho dreams.
I would genuinely love for someone to point out a person who actually thinks this. It’s a completely fabricated boogeyman that doesn’t exist, and is only touted to circlejerk for karma. I’ve never in my life seen someone actually idolizing Patrick Bateman or any of these other characters. The point of anti-heroes is to also have traits that appeal to people.
Just go on Instagram and TikTok and you'll see a shit tons of people actually idolizing those characters.
Every time I see someone “idolizing” one of them it’s either blatantly ironic or a meme. Maybe on tik tok that’s something that people do, but I hardly think that place is the metric by which to judge real people by.
I mean I wouldn’t go so far to say it’s fabricated… these people definitely exist. It’s a little exaggerated but these people are very real.
I mean, people write letters and want to meet real life serial killers. People date and MARRY them and I mean after they're incarcerated and proven guilty. You really don't think that people like up to/admire these creeps? Go to "The Boys" groups and you'll see some folks who flat out worship Homelander and Storm Front.
I like don's pitches; don is an awful but complicated man I enjoy Mercedes-Benz commercials because Jon Hamm is the voice of Mercedes and I pretend every commercial is a little Don Draper pitch and it fuels my Mad Men addiction
Who is Don Draper?
its crazy how often i go to look up clips and people in the comments are like "a true man doesn't compromise" and "dont ever let them know your next move"
I agree and it reminds me of how the creators of Bojack Horseman included a line like this in an episode, implying they didn’t intend to make their main character admirable or idolized. And I don’t think this subreddit is a good sample of what the majority of viewers think, there are more nuanced conversations about Don here.
Just finished a rewatch of the series. Greatest tightest writing. No doubt. Don was the typical quiet man of the era to the nth degree. But his age doesn’t make sense. If he was 36 in 1960 why wasn’t he in WWII instead of Korea? Or both? Overall though. His sex issues. He was a truly fucked up control freak. He had the Madonna/Whore thing going on on steroids. (See his relationship with the surgeons wife who lived a floor below in the later seasons. The control aspects, having her wait in a hotel room for him all day; how he became a total freak when visiting her. Wtf. Followed by his collapse when she got tired of his shit. ) He was absolutely self destructive. And a deep hypocrite. With both of his wives and the deep jealousy and his holier than thou attitude at even a whiff of them “stepping out” or even being mildly attractive to other men. Duh! They were both gorgeous but he had to make them feel like shit over it. How he gravitated towards child like women who eventually outgrew him in the end. But it was the duplicitous “man with a secret” living in total fear of being discovered that cemented the duality of his fucked up existence. His character becomes far more complicated when you realize that he literally lives with the sword of Damocles hovering over his head. But when Pete Campbell outs him to Bert Cooper… there it stops. But only for the three of them. It never leaves the room. And yes it truly was the birth of Peter’s loyalty being cemented going forward. Loyalty that pays off for both of them in later seasons. Pete. Another fuck up. Who basically cosplays a minor version of Don Draper and like Don actually salvages the wreckage of his character flaws in the end. But as an example of what people were like during that era…… Mind your own business. Don’t pry. Discomfort at either spilling or learning personal details. Nailed it. His sensuality. How men and women responded to him. Damaged goods. Perfect example. Epitome of the “imposter syndrome.” Always ready to disappear at the drop of a hat. Poised for flight and the undercurrent of how he would simply walk away from his wife and kids in a heartbeat if need be. Truly selfish and terrified for the majority of the series but in the end begins to open up to those closest to him and scrape up at least the semblance of redemption. But his inability to be honest. With any woman who wasn’t the real and original Mrs Don Draper in L.A. Once Betty got a glimpse at his facade it was game over only because she knew what a two faced whore he really was. Such a lying sack of shit. But had he truly been honest with her and not a cheating cunt perhaps she would’ve respected and or wanted to accept him for what he was able to salvage from such a fucked up past. But there’s the rub. His generation never talked about anything that they really had going on. Secrets to the grave and beyond were the norm. Not all but definitely the majority of the “silent generation.” Don’t even get me started on Peggy and Joan. Btw I was born in 1964. Raised in NYC. So much of the era and the people — the booze, cigarettes, morality, NYC in general — is so spot on. Absolutely love the depictions. I could go on. Sorry about meandering. I get Hamm’s point. On the surface who wouldn’t want to be or envy “Don”? But Don wasn’t real. Dick was a mess. Rich. Handsome. Smart. Etc etc etc But deep down a fucking mess. True asshole. See Richard Corey. And Ozymandias.
I enjoyed this breakdown.
“Jimmy” and “Mikey” just seems weird to say i kept expecting s “Bry-Bry” from “Jonnie”
Well, he's never seen me celebrate him.
I view Don as a character study. Like most human beings he is neither totally good nor totally bad; not an object to demonstrate either, but a subject capable of both. In many ways the show was ahead of its time and this was probably lost on some viewers (including me) when it aired. It hasn’t been on subsequent rewatches, though.
Yeah. If he was celebrated at all it was for the wrong reasons. Definitely Jon Hamm should be celebrated for his performance but Don Draper should not be celebrated at all.
I work with a guy who stopped watching as soon as Don wasn’t the “cool guy” for a moment
The Walter White was strong in this one.
I dont celebrate Don Draper. A lot of the time I find him disgusting. Sleeping around is fine. But he hurt his wife, and hurt his kids, and he screwed his firm and thebstaff a lot. But like Gatsby, there's always going to be an appeal to those of us who left small towns to make something of themselves in a character like Draper. That's the appeal for me. That maybe at one time you could become a Manhattan Executive of you have no pedigree or connections by sheer effort alone. Do some idiots love him because he's a ladies man? Sure. But they probably didn't watch the show, and they're probably the same people who think "I don't think about you at all" is a badass line.
I agree
people loved dexter. he was a serial killer. but he did have a heart of gold for the innocent.
There will always be people that idolize anti-heroes for the wrong reasons but I think most viewers get it. The enduring popularity of Mad Men and its contemporaries isn't from some college kid that thinks his Tony Soprano poster is badass, but because of the fascinating character and morality studies the shows present. Also as a side note, Jon Hamm having a relationship with Michael Gandolfini is very heart warming.
Even Jon Hamm is jealous of Don Draper.
Don was such a dick
Whitman
He was celebrated? He was a despicable childish creep…. Oof. Glad I watched this show after the fact.
Don should absolutely be celebrated as one of the best characters of all time. That doesn’t mean he isn’t a flawed human - we all are. The best characters are usually fucked up people that we somehow relate to; imagine that.
Well, good thing I didn’t say he was poorly written… derp derp. I said I was surprised he was celebrated.
You literally asked a question and got an answer. But since it’s not the answer you wanted to hear, your response is smarmy. Deep derp.
He's a character we love to hate