I don't think they did.  It looked like just another occasion for people to stand around the TV set, like an astronaut launch or something.

It didn't even come up to the emotional level of the Princess Diana death years later, except for Betty, who seemed truly affected and choosed to change her life because of it.

Hi Becky--yes, I think they got it right.  People were absolutely stunned when JFK was violently murdered. Everyone was GLUED to a TV set. Phone lines were overloaded and failed. Then Oswald was shot on live television.  It was as if the world had gone mad. Businesses were closed and streets were quiet. Stillness.  My father drank heavily for days afterward. Very sad time for many...

I thought they did. It would have looked cheesy if they did some sort of montage of "everyman" reactions. The characters on the show were genuinely affected by it, especially Pete, Betty and of course the whole wedding fiasco. It showed both the emotional toll as well as the practical toll - life still has to go on, even the day after such an event. Think of Joan's talk with Roger.

I wasn't there, so no idea if they got it right, BUT, i did like the scene where Don comes into the office and the phones are all ringing, everyone is piled up in one spot, and then the phones stop. Wasn't that a great way to show not only "everyman" reacting, but the foreshadowing of Don's emotional world crashing down around him?  The look on his face, like "I've created this persona that deals well in this world, but I have no idea how to react in this situation"  I thought it really showed how insubstantial his Don personality is- and the real man beneath is about to be unleashed.  Anyone else think that expression on his face was like the real face beneath the cracking facade??  Really a perfect scene, i thought.

The idea clearly wasn't to depict how the assissination affected everyone in America, but rather to show how it touched the lives of the Sterling-Cooper employees and those close to them.  If this episode had been directed by Michael Bay, we'd have probably seen a slow pan across a golden wheat field in the mid-west as real salt of the Earth people huddled around a transistor radio as the news of Kennedy's death crackled through the speaker.  Of course, they'd have probably been Republicans and cackled as they turned it off, but...you see what I'm driving at.

Think about how many times you've heard the line, "I'll never forget where I was when Kennedy got shot."  That's the individual reaction a TV series like this is trying to capture.

Whenever someone asks Peggy where she was when she heard Kennedy was shot, do you think she'll say she was in a hotel room for a lunchtime quickie?

They got it right (I was a teenager--just old enough to watch the adults and recognize a little more than Sally and Bobby).  They also got right that in some worlds (like the world of Joan's husband, the doctor), life went on.  Births, deaths, weddings....

Did you notice the episode covered a number of days (from the day before the assasination (Pete's conversation with Pryce) to the day of the funeral (as Betty told Don she no longer loved him).  I initially thought Margaret's crying was the morning of the wedding....instead it was the final fitting of her wedding dress (notice seamstress in the room). 

Still, it all proves the emotion of the event was enough to sustain it nationwide over days.  Pete complained about Harry computing its impact on Sterling Cooper; he must have singularly realized that television is driving the emotion over invisible boundaries through walls and cultures to the hearts and minds of even the most hardened.  It bound us as a nation and would also serve to facilitate the healing (or moving forward).
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Leggzz - the comment on television is right on.  The Kennedy assassination demonstrated the impact of TV as the unifying medium it would become in the 60's. The way in which it unfolded live and in our living rooms created a heightened sense of shared experience.  More intimate and immediate than radio, it allowed millions of people to feel as if they had taken part in events at which they could not be present.