

In any event, Jane accepts the proposal and remarks how the experience is like a “mushroom” induced dream from which she expects to abruptly wake up.
Both the mushroom and dream references seem to invoke imagery from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, a story that itself turns out to be a dream the title character has while sleeping next to a river bank. In Chapter 5, “Advice from a Caterpillar,” Alice is asked by a hookah smoking Caterpillar sitting on a mushroom who she is. Alice replies, “I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” This answer is a longer version of the same one that Don Draper will give when similarly questioned later.
The Caterpillar has Alice recite "You are old, Father William,” which contains the verse:
You are old, Father William,' the young man said,Alice ends up eating some of the mushroom and grows to immense size. This tracks with the hotel room discussion regarding Jane growing older emotionally to catch up with Roger. The scene also foreshadows a similar dream-like relationship that is paralleled in Don’s storyline involving a different “Father William.” In addition to Alice in Wonderland, "The Jet Set" also makes a pointed reference to The Sound and The Fury, written by another “William,” William Faulkner.
And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head
Do you think, at your age, it is right?
The SC creative team, sans Don who’s in California with Pete for an aeronautics convention, lack focus as it meets to ostensibly discuss the Right Guard account. Ken cites statistics on Right Guard users (90 percent engage in sports) while the still closeted Sal, reading a copy of Playboy, chats about the previous night’s episode of Loretta Young with Harry. Taking charge, Peggy adjourns the meeting by stating that the Right Guard approach, “men being men,” is fine until the deodorant manufacturer decides to market a women’s product. On their way out of the conference room, Kurt, one of the two new creative guys (Smitty being the other) asks Peggy to join him for a Bob Dylan concert in Greenwich Village.
We first see Don and Pete by the hotel pool in California. The airline has misplaced Don’s luggage. This reintroduces the metaphor started in “Six Month Leave” comparing one’s life to a suitcase. From that standpoint, Don’s luggage being lost has both real and symbolic meaning. Pete clearly wants to goof off in the pool. But Don sternly tells him that there will be no swimming this trip (a pledge he himself will break). Don is reminded of his marital woes when he later sees what like looks like Betty sitting at a bar with a brunette (continuing the “Jackie/Marilyn” construct from “Six Month Leave"). It becomes clear, however, that the blond only resembles Betty after both women get up to leave. Interestingly, in a few key shots, the illusion is maintained by having January Jones, the real Betty, play her own “look-alike.”

It’s after this eerie encounter that Don is approached by a well-heeled sophisticate named Willy (the same name from the Alice in Wonderland verse) who asks Don if he's an actor or an astronaut. This turns out to be a ruse by the white haired gentleman (whose also has the title of "count") to introduce Don to a younger woman who will later play Jane to his Roger Sterling. She is not so subtly named “Joy.” After initially declining their invitation to dinner, Don, who orders an “old fashioned,” joins Pete at the bar where the junior executive begins to drone on about scientifically engineering man for space flight. This corresponds to Alice’s experience in Wonderland with the shape-shifting effects of the mushroom and a later attempt by a “jet setter” to inject Don with something after he passes out by their pool.
Back in New York, Roger has a distressing discussion with a lawyer about his upcoming divorce and impending marriage. Not soon after, Duck enters his office with a different proposal for Roger to consider. Duck thinks it’s time for him to be made a partner at SC. Roger questions Duck’s actual contributions to the firm and suggests that until he shows more profitable results, such a marriage is impossible.


Memories of Tony Soprano's spells come to mind when Don faints from heat exhaustion while talking to Joy by the pool. Reinforcing the notion that this is part of an elaborate daydream, the shot that follows Don's fall to the ground is angled in a manner that makes him appear to still be upright. This is also reminiscent of Mad Men's opening credits image showing a falling man whose turns out to be sitting on a couch. Don wakes up with a crowd around him. As mentioned earlier, a doctor named Klaus attempts to give Don an injection which he refuses. Thematically, this suggests that Don is not ready to be "reeingineered."
At dinner, Mexican food is served. While Don’s implausible claim to never have eaten Mexican food before is intended to set him up as an outsider, it’s clear that he has an affinity for these people. One of the dinner guests complains that she’d rather eat French cuisine because of a distaste for pig. This almost certainly refers to Don’s younger self as presented in “The Inheritance” who informs Betty that he “hates ham.” Conversely, at another point in the conversation, there’s a reference to the fact that, except for Don, the men in at the table don’t conform to Right Guard’s target audience of 90 percent who engage in sports.

The use of the MIRV imagery as a symbolic represention of the well to do jet setters noted above is further developed when they play a game called “places.” The point of the game is for each player to in turn quickly name a world city that starts with the last letter of a city named by the previous player. The list they shout out harkens back to the map of USSR targets that Don saw during the MIRV presentation. In fact, Odessa is both named during the game and visible on the MIRV slideshow map.



Later, showing none of the self-confidence about men displayed at the Right Guard meeting, Peggy confides to Kurt that, like Judy Garland, her Wizard of Oz counterpart, she always seems to pick the wrong “boy.” Kurt feels that it’s a matter of style and offers to “fix” her. He starts the makeover by proceeding to cut off Peggy’s pigtail.

The very next scene, in fact, the very next line of dialogue, has Joan entering Duck’s office and, referring to his secretary (whose also named Joy), saying with multiple meanings that “Joy seems to have stepped away.”
Duck, clearly drinking again, pops a Certs in his mouth before approaching Roger and Bert Cooper about the proposed buyout. Duck, not repeating his remark about changing the welcome mats, frames it as a merger, NOT a takeover to the very receptive owners.
In another meeting room, Pete joins the gang as they watch a TV news report of civil unrest in Mississippi. This, incidentally, is where Paul Kinsey went with his girlfriend to register African American voters. The SC staff seem blissfully unaware of the fact that the world inside and out of their office is changing. Pete has brought with him a bag of oranges from California, which, as established in the Godfather films, conveys a sense of doom.

The final page of The Sound and the Fury describes how one of the main characters, revolting against a world that, for him, has been turned on its ear, is calmed down by the illusion of a perceived return to normality. The last shot of "The Jet Set" shot shows Don’s suitcase being left at his front door. He is not there with it nor does Betty open the door to take it in.
Don/Dick's next journey would seem an attempt on his part to return to normality. However, unlike the title of the Faulkner book, and, with apologies to yet another William, William Shakespeare, from whose Macbeth that book's title is taken, this journey may signify a great deal.
2 comments:
Interesting interpretations... the Alice in Wonderland references were very visceral, and I'd forgotten about the North by Northwest moment until reading your post... I'd also add there's a nice nod to Fellini's La Dolce Vita, or maybe Antonioni’s L’Avventura, which Don's movie tastes this season (La notte) suggests he's watching the proceedings unveil like a movie he's watching.
Not sure how intentional it is or not (to be sure, Weiner's usually very intentional with these things, though,) the edition of The Sound and the Fury that we see Don ripping the page out of had an appendix f that ended the book, an edition which Faulkner rewrote the ending for. The appendix lists every character, explaining what happened to them. After the final character is named, it says "They endured." Below that line, Don writes the address (which looks like "1604 N. Station Pl"
Also worth noting, Faulkner's death was was just a couple months prior to the time of this episode, making him more of the moment. Add to that the parallels between Don's fish-out-of-water trip and Faulkner's time in Hollywood, and there's a nice marriage to this pop cultural reference.
Good stuff. Sounds like Faulkner put a happier twist on the edition you refer to. Interesting.
BTW, I replayed the episode from Comcast's "OnDemand" so I could freeze it to take note of the cities on the MIRV map and see what address Don wrote down.
My TV sucks, so I couldn't quite read either. But, I felt like one of those Lost fans who scrutinizes every frame looking for clues. :)
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