I was thinking about the tie ins to Kennedy’s assassination, the fall of Camelot and to the apparent death of Don Draper’s life.  It seemed like the assassination was always in the wings to coincide with the lives of Don and the people of SC.

Two connections I got were;

We saw the rifle in Pete’s office.  We hadn’t seen it since the first season? When he first got it and brought it to work he was pointing it at women in the office like a sniper “first person shooter” camera angle.  I always thought that Pete would be Don’s Lee Harvey and be the one to eventually bring him down.  Maybe Pete can be Don's Jack Ruby and snuff out Henry.

Betty’s car is a black Lincoln Continental same car as Kennedy’s.  I thought it was Henry’s sinister ride and that she was the one pulling up in the white doughy mom’s car.  A very bad Omen for Betty.

I have to play back the episode but I thought most of Pete’s comments about the loss of JFK were what Betty would be saying to herself about Don.  “Nobody voted for him LBJ”  Betty didn’t marry a Dick Whitman.  “Nothing is going to change” and I’m sure there were even more comments. 

Did anyone else see tie ins?

I also noticed the rifle in Pete's office. After hearing of his "demotion", there was a very awkward moment when Pete passed by Cosgrove near a secretaries desk, then he ducked into his office. I thought he was going to come out all "Lee Harvey"!
(And BTW, more people are killed in this country by .22 calibers than any other.)
As to JFK parallels, Peggy's AquaNet ad looked eerily like Kennedy's ride. I think they're going to have to scrap it.

James, I have been thinking the exact same thing for a couple of weeks.  I picked up on the car as well.  I am on pins and needles because I fully expect a major character to die in the last episode.  There have been too many allusions to the assassination and too many allusions to the Kennedys.  I expected baby Gene to die because of Jackie losing that baby.  And the gun...Chekov's rule seems to hover over that.  Also, suicide has come up a few times, as well.  I don't know who it will be, but I expect that someone is going to the great ad agency in the sky.

So who's most likely to die?
In decending order:

1. Greg Harris - any # of military mishaps
2. Roger Sterling - third & final heart attack
3. Duck Phillips - alcoholism related accident
4. Bert Cooper - entropy
5. Henry Francis - political intrigue or jealous husband

Of course MW never does the expected, so these choices would have to be thrown out the window.

mneeley, I'd go with Pete shooting Pryce because of that damned gun.  Oh, I just saw I misspelled "Chekhov."  Or maybe they'll put the gun in Lois's hands in which case it could be anybody.  All I know is that my predictions are always completely wrong.

Pete was clutching his rifle during the Cuban Missile Crisis last season (2).

Oh gosh, I missed the Pete-has-a-gun episodes.  That would be a perfect ending to the season, ushering in a new violent era.  Maybe someone will take the "hippie" role.

I don't think the brief glimpse of Campbell's squirrel gun behind his office coach is of any significance.  I've seen it back there in previous episodes too.

You seem to be on to something with the parallels between Don Draper and Kennedy, though.  The timing is clearly not a coincidence.  Both men quickly rose to positions of power through deceptive and even criminal means, and now it's all vanishing for both of them. 

As Don watched television with Bobby and Sally, he reassured them that they would have a new president in no time - LBJ.  Could it be that Don himself will soon be replaced by a second-tier politician we know of? 

*Excited whispers abound*

Somehow Sterling dying seems to be very plausible.
After he throwed her wife on the bed he was notably agitated. At the wedding he said to Mona that she is a lioness. Then she talks to Joan. Sounded like farewel to me.

It makes sense that Roger could die, what with those two heart attacks last season.  But I think the timing would be odd if it were to happen in the last episode of season 3. It seems like they have enough on their plate right now as it is.  It'd be like, "Oh my god, Kennedy was just shot and killed! The country has been turned upside down!! And on top of that, the Drapers are having a terrible crisis in their relationship!!  What's this?  Oh, and...Roger Sterling just died, I hear?  Well god damn."

What have some other famous season-ending cliffhangers been?  On Dallas, didn't one of them end up only being a dream and everyone was so pissed?

It has to be something big and something plot-altering.  I say get rid of January Jones.  She is terrible.

Let it be known that I was the first to champion this possibility in the other thread!   I think my opinions about Betty's uselessness as a character are pretty accurate. 

I kind of jokingly suggested that Don might kill Betty, but to be honest, I really can't imagine how things are going to play out if those two aren't together.  As flat as Betty's character is (dramatically, I mean), without the perceived normalcy of their relationship, I don't know what kind of plot line would come of it.  When Don was in the proverbial dog house, Betty pretty much took the kids.  I don't think a formal separation would lead to a joint custody situation, though, and given the fact that Betty is very harsh with her kids and also that thing the lawyer said about the likelihood of Don getting custody, is it a possibility that Betty might become an absent mother in favor of shacking up with the politician dude?  After all, he did ask her in the derby episode, "What does that (pregnancy / motherhood) feel like?"  To which Betty responded:  "Mostly it just feels uncomfortable."

No, this situation is just not going to work for Don.  He'll probably put his army rifle in Betty's mouth as she sleeps and pull the trigger and tell the cops he came home from work and found her like that.  Being a creative director, he'll draft the perfect suicide note on Betty's stationary, of course.  Or maybe he'll try to blame it on somebody else?

"Don, can you think of anyone who may have wanted to harm your wife?  Did she have any enemies?"

"Well, her and the baby got off to a pretty rough start, I guess.  Uhhh, there's that single mother down the street - they had a bit of a cat fight in the supermarket one day.  Let's see...there's a school teacher I'm pretty sure is a little loopy.  She may have offed Betty in an attempt to usurp her.  Uhhh.  Carla, our housekeeper, has been known to be a little frosty with her.  The other day I overheard her say to Betty, 'Mizzus Draper, you folks is livin' da high life up in diss bitch, and I's workin' fo' next to nothin'!  We's tired of you white bitches keepin' us down, so I want a raise!'"

"You don't say?"

"I'm only telling you what I heard, officer."

Don isn't going to kill anybody.  Betty could "accidentally" kill herself.  She is my primary focus for elimination.  Get a good actress in there.  They are available.

Here is a great illistration from Dyna Moe of forshadowing the Kennedy Assassination.

The Aqua Net pitch from the episode before the last….  I remember Peggy saying “her scarf falls off so I reach back to give her mine”

http://www.flickr.com/pho ...

And can everyone stop picking on Betty.  I don't know how you can, she's so so...  beautiful.

I agree with you, James.  She is stunningly beautiful.  Like Grace Kelly.  Like the Breck Girl.  I can't argue with you there.  But she's a terrible actress.  She's been given a fabulous role with great lines and when she gives them, it's like a cardboard cutout is talking.  I used to think she was acting--pretending to be cold and wooden.  But I no longer think so.  She really is wooden.

Most of the stuff I've said is just horsing around, James.  Betty is a beautiful lady, but her character is meant to be a little frigid, I think.

No, I was the big joker there parroting Betty vapid insult of Bobbie Barrett to Don. “how could you, she’s so… old.”

I remember everyone attacking Francis Coppalia’s daughter’s acting in Godfather III.  Same complaints I‘ve been reading here, but I thought she captured what a dorky teenage girl acts like trying to act mature.  I think January Jones may be doing that, some women are fumbling, stoney, erratic icy bitches and can never be as smooth as a Don.   As for her being fringed in bed its anyone’s guess.  Many beautiful women are accustom to being the center of attention for most of their lives are “pillow queens” in the sack laying back expecting to be ravished.   

On a big bragging note.  If you go to Dyna Moe’s Flicker site, that I tagged in my previous post, she used to sell her drawings and I have a Betty Draper shirt.  It’s the illustration of her smashing the dinning room chair.  People who know the show flip when see me wearing it.  Now she has a disclaimer that because of her success in getting made an official illustrator for the show she can’t sell any of her images.

Wow, Becky, I couldn't disagree with you more.  Jones is playing a woman who is depressed.  She is imprisoned in a life she doesn't like.  Check out this post on Pandagon which says it way better than I could.

http://pandagon.net/index ...

I'll have to honestly say that I thought Don was going to kill his brother on the last night he saw him, when he gave him the $5,000. I thought for sure he was reaching for a handgun when he went into that briefcase, I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

I'd like to think that Don couldn't kill, as that would make him irredeemable as a protagonist. I think they'd turn off way too many people if he offed the mother of his children.

If Betty's going to go, it will be an accident. Maybe with Henry Francis, which could lead to embarrassment for Don if found out?

I just can't figure out what's going to happen on Sunday's finale! I wonder, will Betty simply leave - deserting Don & the kids? (She seems to like the baby but the other children... pretty icy.)  Will Don and Roger and Bert somehow buy the company back from Sinjin, et al?  It's a given (I think) that we need Joanie and Sal back! So many ways it could play out. One thing - I hope that the whole Don-Betty thing doesn't continue as before with the "I'm sorry..." she forgives, he cheats again, etc.  Though I think the show does a brilliant job in capturing Betty's 60's-era mom/housewife, suburban isolation, and ever-creeping substance abuse. Seeing more of that may just be the touch of realism the show's going for.

Well Jack, I guess we will have to disagree.

Anyway, we are all dying to see the finale.  It seems to point to Betty somehow, and I suppose it could be her walking out the door.  I can't think of anything else.  What would Hitchcock do?

Didn't catch Sunday's episode for a variety of reasons - have been out of town all week and am now downloading it. In an effort to avoid spoilers, this is the only thread I've looked at since getting back and regret missing out on all the delicious speculation.  All I can say is I cannot believe thirteen weeks have passed so quickly - it is with equal measures of dread and anticipation that I look forward to Sunday night.

This has got to be the only network that airs episodes from its shows consecutively and without interruption.  Actually, I don't know if they do that for Breaking Bad or whatever, but I know that every week there's a new Mad Men episode while House on Fox, for example, has been a re-run for the past couple of weeks - and they're only a few episodes in to the season.

jkerouac59, whenever I miss an episode or want to watch one again, I go to surfthechannel.com.  The megavideo links you'll see when you find the seasons of Mad Men allow you to watch 72 minutes per day as a trial.  Anyway, it's in excellent HD quality a lot of the time and you get to stream it.  Much quicker than your downloading.

"What would Hitchcock do?"

I dunno.  Maybe the neighbor's pigeons could come over and take care of her.

Haha, Jack.  But that would be too much like The Birds, wouldn't it?  AH would think of something totally clever and out of the blue.  I bet you will come up with it.

"House" has 24-26 episodes a yr.  Since FOX had the World Series, it's understandable that their other shows be interrupted for baseball. 

"Breaking Bad" runs the same way as "Madmen."  I love both shows, but kind of feel that BrBa gets more attention and publicity.  Now that could be due to a lot of different reasons.  Vince Gilligan, coming from the X-Files, may have a better publicity machine than Weiner.  Bryan Cranston has won 2 years straight as best actor in a drama, and he was very well known prior to BrBa.

Maybe it's because Madmen has too much of an ensemble cast, or that AMC has only the money to advertise 1 show properly, and that's BrBa.

I didn't know about Madmen until it's 2nd season.  I knew about Breaking Bad months before it aired its first episode.  And I am not usually late to arrive at good television.

Would Betty pull the family apart over the holidays?  Thanksgiving follows close on the 22nd, with Christmas shortly thereafter.  I think Don would do everything he could to shield the kids from having bad memories about Christmas - not sure what Betty would do though.  The cliffhanger may very well be that  the Draper domestic situation is unresolved till next season - kind of like the ambiguity of Betty's announcement at the end of Season Two.

My personal wish would be to see the show end with a bittersweet Christmas day.  Sally turns on the radio, we hear Paul McCartney count in on "I Saw Her Standing There", and as he snarls "Four!", the screen goes black, the credits roll and the song continues.  OK - it's a stretch, the song was released the 26th, but what the heck, its a small liberty.

Were the Beatles getting any airplay in North America at all in 1963?  I remember hearing that test audiences on American Bandstand laughed at "Love me Do" when they played it for them.  They didn't freak out until "I Want to Hold Your Hand" much later.

Couldn't have been too much later - "Meet the Beatles" was released in Jan '64 and they landed in New York 2-7-64, followed by the Ed Sullivan appearance on 2-9.