Played perfectly, I thought. This guy
hits it pretty good:
Oh, good, I'm not the only one who fell for the Bobby bit. I agree, Michael, that the joke was a clever one, and not just on Chaough's part. It played on Don's expectations, but on the audience's, too—I believed it was the real Bobby because I've come to expect each season of Mad Men to have its Kennedy-ex-machina moment: Season 1 had the episode structured around JFK's surprising defeat of Nixon in the 1960 election; Season 2 ended with the Cuban missile crisis; last season, there was the terrific episode dramatizing the assassination. No wonder we thought Bobby would swoop in to save the day for SCDP, even if he did sound like Mayor Quimby.
While it was clever to upend our expectations—something the Mad Men writers excel at—like you, Michael, I found the move highlighted how tightly focused this season has been on the life of the firm. History has rarely intruded on the proceedings. The Beatles come to town, but it's a minor plot point (and we hear nothing about the actual concert. Did Sally faint?). Peggy narrowly escapes a raid at a beatnik party. Dr. Greg, a character whose fate no Mad Men fan loses sleep over, gets shipped off to Vietnam. What else? This season, the series seems to have shied away from building episodes around major historical events and instead allows history to seep into the story.
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