Entertainment

‘Mad’ for the cad

MIDGE DANIELS (Rosemarie DeWitt) (
)

SUZANNE FARRELL (Abigail Spencer) (
)

BOBBIE BARRETT (Melinda McGraw) (
)

FAYE MILLER (Cara Buono) (
)

When he attended that Rolling Stones concert last season, Don Draper’s favorite song had to have been “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Even when married to Betty (January Jones), an elegant, Grace Kelly look-a-like, or Megan (Jessica Paré), a gorgeous secretary-turned-actress, he always finds time to, shall we say, entertain himself. We won’t even get into the diner waitresses he cavorted with after his divorce from Betty. His choices in women reveal he doesn’t have a “type,” only that he is insatiable. —R.R.

* The owner of Menken’s department store, Rachel was a client of Sterling Cooper who shocked Don in a meeting when she pooh-poohed his pitch for revitalizing her store. The turn-on for Don was that here was an independent businesswoman with strong romantic yearnings. Their business relationship quickly became personal and Draper wanted to run off to LA with her. But she encouraged him to stay with his wife and family. When Rachel ultimately married a man named Tilden Katz, Don realized she was the one who got away.

* Don satisfied his bohemian urges with beatnik Midge, an illustrator who had artistic pretensions, lived in downtown Manhattan, smoked marijuana and dropped names like Kerouac and Ginsberg. Midge got around and when Don saw her in a photograph with another man, he ended the affair, giving her a wad of cash — his Christmas bonus. For Don, Midge was pure escapism from his corporate and suburban life. There was never any potential here for a long-term relationship, proved when Midge came back like a bad penny years later, hoping to get Don to buy one of her paintings so she could buy heroin.

* You knew Don was in bad shape when he started hitting on his daughter’s homeroom teacher, Miss Farrell. Another idealistic innocent like Midge, Suzanne sizzled in the bedroom, but Don’s affair with her only made it clear that his marriage to Betty was dying. Don and Suzanne were planning to take a trip together when Betty confronted Don about his secret life and asked for a divorce. Suzanne vanished.

* Talent manager Bobbie Barrett was a brassy, kinky so-and-so married to a Don Rickles-like insult comic, Jimmy Barrett, who offended the wife of a Sterling Cooper client during a commercial shoot for Utz potato chips. Bobbie liked it rough — Don used to tie her up — and their affair ended when she revealed that she bragged about Don’s sexual prowess with some of his castoffs. The least compatible of the Don’s mistresses.

* Another one of Don’s “strong” women, Faye was a psychologist working as a consultant with his ad agency. Don was able to confide his past as Dick Whitman to Faye, knowing she was a trusted confidante. He broke off his relationship with her after he proposed to his secretary, Megan Calvet, whom he fell in love with when he took her on a business trip to baby-sit his kids.