Mad Men Rewatch: Joan Halloway

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing personality type into the mix, she is supposed to be an ISTJ. She's trying to make logical choices. she had love affairs along the way but i think she knew better than to try to make that into something serious. It was suppose to make sense that she held out and married a doctor. She didn't bank on him being abusive and nuts. Then from that position she did what she could to make something for herself.

I’m surprised Joan didn’t figure out that the doctor was a loser…she is good at reading people generally. But then again she does make questionable romantic decisions: Roger and having his baby!

Trudy also seems savvy and clever but is married to the turd that is Pete. It does seem to imply the 60s ideal of domesticity was a false bill of goods. Most of the married women end up miserable

This is the main theme of the series. The American Dream: not a dream.

+1 more pointedly, The American Dream as sold to you by this very bunch of aholes: not a dream.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think part of her wasn't super into being married. Like if she were living in 2026 she'd be single or a serial monogamous. Even if subconsciously, she wasn't putting out marriage vibes.

+1 And later it’s revealed in a conversation with an old friend that she had already been married and divorced before we meet her in the show.

This explains all you need to know.

Previous marriage + birth control = doesn't need to marry again unless wants to

She was married and divorced? I don’t remember that story point at all. The truth is, Joan felt time ticking and that her window of opportunity was closing and that’s why she married greg. She wanted to land someone with status bc yes, she was a working girl and *thought* she wanted to live the lives of all the corporate wives she saw around her (her aspiration). It didn’t work out according to plan and she realizes she had to go get it for herself. Remember, after she got canned from McCann, she was only given a small portion of her stock as payout. She hoped to live the life she aspired to but in the end realizes she doesn’t want a sugar daddy to provide it bc she finds meaning in work and wants to put her fate into her own hands. Roger was her one true love on the show, but she realizes with time, how unserious of a fop he was. She could never truly respect him again after choosing and marrying Jane (what she was waiting for years to happen to her). Roger was unwilling to marry an equal; this is why he chose Jane.

Yes, it happened before the show began so it wasn’t a story point but she mentioned it a couple times.
https://www.vulture.com/2015/04/joan-first-divorce-mad-men.html?mid=imdb

[Anonymous]

I thought it was assumed that back then there wasn’t enough satin in the world to make the bodice of a wedding dress for her. I mean….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing personality type into the mix, she is supposed to be an ISTJ. She's trying to make logical choices. she had love affairs along the way but i think she knew better than to try to make that into something serious. It was suppose to make sense that she held out and married a doctor. She didn't bank on him being abusive and nuts. Then from that position she did what she could to make something for herself.

I’m surprised Joan didn’t figure out that the doctor was a loser…she is good at reading people generally. But then again she does make questionable romantic decisions: Roger and having his baby!

Trudy also seems savvy and clever but is married to the turd that is Pete. It does seem to imply the 60s ideal of domesticity was a false bill of goods. Most of the married women end up miserable

Indeed! It’s painful to see these beautiful and smart women married to lackluster men and trapped into the limited roles of wife and home maker. There isn’t one positive romantic relationship portrayed on the show. Well I suppose Henry is a good husband to Betty.

Pete, Roger, and late bloomer Don were multi-millionaire ad executives. Their “dumb” wives were pampered high status SAHMs. That is the dream life outcome of every woman for millennia… up until women started having their brains fried by subversive feminism within the last 50 years.

I feel like you didn't watch the show. Pete, Roger, and Don all cheat on their wives extensively. Pete impregnates a secretary while he's engaged to Trudy, and later rapes a nanny in their apartment building. Don not only has a series of affairs, including with his kids' teacher, but also engages in a wide variety of self-destructive behavior including going on weird benders in California while covering up the fact that he stole his identity from a dead man he got killed in Korea. Roger spends years cheating on Mona, and is also fully in love with Joan, before finally marrying Jane, who is the same age as his daughter.

You don't even have to be a feminist to think these men treated their wives badly. You just have to be a person. Come on.

Oh I forgot about the time Don left his son's birthday party to go get drunk and then comes home with a dog. OMG can you imagine being married to him?

There was also the time he had an affair with the agent of a comedian who was essential to one of his accounts, and then he and the agent get into a car accident while Don was driving drunk. Don winds up paying Peggy to keep the agent at her apartment for a week until her injuries heal, so the comedian doesn't find out and blow up the account (he finds out and blows up the account anyway, lol).

Yeah, real dream guys. What a catch!

Don left Sally's party, not Bobby's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think part of her wasn't super into being married. Like if she were living in 2026 she'd be single or a serial monogamous. Even if subconsciously, she wasn't putting out marriage vibes.

+1 And later it’s revealed in a conversation with an old friend that she had already been married and divorced before we meet her in the show.

This explains all you need to know.

Previous marriage + birth control = doesn't need to marry again unless wants to

She was married and divorced? I don’t remember that story point at all. The truth is, Joan felt time ticking and that her window of opportunity was closing and that’s why she married greg. She wanted to land someone with status bc yes, she was a working girl and *thought* she wanted to live the lives of all the corporate wives she saw around her (her aspiration). It didn’t work out according to plan and she realizes she had to go get it for herself. Remember, after she got canned from McCann, she was only given a small portion of her stock as payout. She hoped to live the life she aspired to but in the end realizes she doesn’t want a sugar daddy to provide it bc she finds meaning in work and wants to put her fate into her own hands. Roger was her one true love on the show, but she realizes with time, how unserious of a fop he was. She could never truly respect him again after choosing and marrying Jane (what she was waiting for years to happen to her). Roger was unwilling to marry an equal; this is why he chose Jane.

Joan married when she was in her early 20s. It did not last long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing personality type into the mix, she is supposed to be an ISTJ. She's trying to make logical choices. she had love affairs along the way but i think she knew better than to try to make that into something serious. It was suppose to make sense that she held out and married a doctor. She didn't bank on him being abusive and nuts. Then from that position she did what she could to make something for herself.

I’m surprised Joan didn’t figure out that the doctor was a loser…she is good at reading people generally. But then again she does make questionable romantic decisions: Roger and having his baby!

Trudy also seems savvy and clever but is married to the turd that is Pete. It does seem to imply the 60s ideal of domesticity was a false bill of goods. Most of the married women end up miserable

Indeed! It’s painful to see these beautiful and smart women married to lackluster men and trapped into the limited roles of wife and home maker. There isn’t one positive romantic relationship portrayed on the show. Well I suppose Henry is a good husband to Betty.

Pete, Roger, and late bloomer Don were multi-millionaire ad executives. Their “dumb” wives were pampered high status SAHMs. That is the dream life outcome of every woman for millennia… up until women started having their brains fried by subversive feminism within the last 50 years.

I feel like you didn't watch the show. Pete, Roger, and Don all cheat on their wives extensively. Pete impregnates a secretary while he's engaged to Trudy, and later rapes a nanny in their apartment building. Don not only has a series of affairs, including with his kids' teacher, but also engages in a wide variety of self-destructive behavior including going on weird benders in California while covering up the fact that he stole his identity from a dead man he got killed in Korea. Roger spends years cheating on Mona, and is also fully in love with Joan, before finally marrying Jane, who is the same age as his daughter.

You don't even have to be a feminist to think these men treated their wives badly. You just have to be a person. Come on.

Oh I forgot about the time Don left his son's birthday party to go get drunk and then comes home with a dog. OMG can you imagine being married to him?

There was also the time he had an affair with the agent of a comedian who was essential to one of his accounts, and then he and the agent get into a car accident while Don was driving drunk. Don winds up paying Peggy to keep the agent at her apartment for a week until her injuries heal, so the comedian doesn't find out and blow up the account (he finds out and blows up the account anyway, lol).

Yeah, real dream guys. What a catch!

Don left Sally's party, not Bobby's.

True, if it was Bobby’s party he wouldn’t have even bothered to show up at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think part of her wasn't super into being married. Like if she were living in 2026 she'd be single or a serial monogamous. Even if subconsciously, she wasn't putting out marriage vibes.

+1 And later it’s revealed in a conversation with an old friend that she had already been married and divorced before we meet her in the show.

This explains all you need to know.

Previous marriage + birth control = doesn't need to marry again unless wants to

She was married and divorced? I don’t remember that story point at all. The truth is, Joan felt time ticking and that her window of opportunity was closing and that’s why she married greg. She wanted to land someone with status bc yes, she was a working girl and *thought* she wanted to live the lives of all the corporate wives she saw around her (her aspiration). It didn’t work out according to plan and she realizes she had to go get it for herself. Remember, after she got canned from McCann, she was only given a small portion of her stock as payout. She hoped to live the life she aspired to but in the end realizes she doesn’t want a sugar daddy to provide it bc she finds meaning in work and wants to put her fate into her own hands. Roger was her one true love on the show, but she realizes with time, how unserious of a fop he was. She could never truly respect him again after choosing and marrying Jane (what she was waiting for years to happen to her). Roger was unwilling to marry an equal; this is why he chose Jane.

Joan married when she was in her early 20s. It did not last long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing personality type into the mix, she is supposed to be an ISTJ. She's trying to make logical choices. she had love affairs along the way but i think she knew better than to try to make that into something serious. It was suppose to make sense that she held out and married a doctor. She didn't bank on him being abusive and nuts. Then from that position she did what she could to make something for herself.

I’m surprised Joan didn’t figure out that the doctor was a loser…she is good at reading people generally. But then again she does make questionable romantic decisions: Roger and having his baby!

Trudy also seems savvy and clever but is married to the turd that is Pete. It does seem to imply the 60s ideal of domesticity was a false bill of goods. Most of the married women end up miserable

Indeed! It’s painful to see these beautiful and smart women married to lackluster men and trapped into the limited roles of wife and home maker. There isn’t one positive romantic relationship portrayed on the show. Well I suppose Henry is a good husband to Betty.

Pete, Roger, and late bloomer Don were multi-millionaire ad executives. Their “dumb” wives were pampered high status SAHMs. That is the dream life outcome of every woman for millennia… up until women started having their brains fried by subversive feminism within the last 50 years.

I feel like you didn't watch the show. Pete, Roger, and Don all cheat on their wives extensively. Pete impregnates a secretary while he's engaged to Trudy, and later rapes a nanny in their apartment building. Don not only has a series of affairs, including with his kids' teacher, but also engages in a wide variety of self-destructive behavior including going on weird benders in California while covering up the fact that he stole his identity from a dead man he got killed in Korea. Roger spends years cheating on Mona, and is also fully in love with Joan, before finally marrying Jane, who is the same age as his daughter.

You don't even have to be a feminist to think these men treated their wives badly. You just have to be a person. Come on.

Oh I forgot about the time Don left his son's birthday party to go get drunk and then comes home with a dog. OMG can you imagine being married to him?

There was also the time he had an affair with the agent of a comedian who was essential to one of his accounts, and then he and the agent get into a car accident while Don was driving drunk. Don winds up paying Peggy to keep the agent at her apartment for a week until her injuries heal, so the comedian doesn't find out and blow up the account (he finds out and blows up the account anyway, lol).

Yeah, real dream guys. What a catch!

Don left Sally's party, not Bobby's.

True, if it was Bobby’s party he wouldn’t have even bothered to show up at all.

True. Very true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bringing personality type into the mix, she is supposed to be an ISTJ. She's trying to make logical choices. she had love affairs along the way but i think she knew better than to try to make that into something serious. It was suppose to make sense that she held out and married a doctor. She didn't bank on him being abusive and nuts. Then from that position she did what she could to make something for herself.

I’m surprised Joan didn’t figure out that the doctor was a loser…she is good at reading people generally. But then again she does make questionable romantic decisions: Roger and having his baby!

Trudy also seems savvy and clever but is married to the turd that is Pete. It does seem to imply the 60s ideal of domesticity was a false bill of goods. Most of the married women end up miserable

Indeed! It’s painful to see these beautiful and smart women married to lackluster men and trapped into the limited roles of wife and home maker. There isn’t one positive romantic relationship portrayed on the show. Well I suppose Henry is a good husband to Betty.

Pete, Roger, and late bloomer Don were multi-millionaire ad executives. Their “dumb” wives were pampered high status SAHMs. That is the dream life outcome of every woman for millennia… up until women started having their brains fried by subversive feminism within the last 50 years.

I feel like you didn't watch the show. Pete, Roger, and Don all cheat on their wives extensively. Pete impregnates a secretary while he's engaged to Trudy, and later rapes a nanny in their apartment building. Don not only has a series of affairs, including with his kids' teacher, but also engages in a wide variety of self-destructive behavior including going on weird benders in California while covering up the fact that he stole his identity from a dead man he got killed in Korea. Roger spends years cheating on Mona, and is also fully in love with Joan, before finally marrying Jane, who is the same age as his daughter.

You don't even have to be a feminist to think these men treated their wives badly. You just have to be a person. Come on.

Oh I forgot about the time Don left his son's birthday party to go get drunk and then comes home with a dog. OMG can you imagine being married to him?

There was also the time he had an affair with the agent of a comedian who was essential to one of his accounts, and then he and the agent get into a car accident while Don was driving drunk. Don winds up paying Peggy to keep the agent at her apartment for a week until her injuries heal, so the comedian doesn't find out and blow up the account (he finds out and blows up the account anyway, lol).

Yeah, real dream guys. What a catch!

Don left Sally's party, not Bobby's.

True, if it was Bobby’s party he wouldn’t have even bothered to show up at all.

Might depend on which Bobby. There's that one Bobby he and Betty visit at summer camp the one time, he must have been their favorite Bobby.

[Anonymous]

I never thought she was pretty. She looked fat and dressed like a hooker. Anything involving her felt so forced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the class commentary. It’s clear Joan is working class even though exceptionally beautiful and intelligent. Roger likes sleeping with her but never seriously offers her marriage or stability. He does marry Jane though, even though she is a secretary and Don marries Megan. Is it implied that Megan and Jane are higher social class?

I don't think you can think about class as this cleanly delineated on Mad Men. It's NY in the 1960s, not the 1860s. Class structures have already been upended a few times. There is the question of being "from money" but then there are also differences between "old money" and new money. You also have multiple self-made characters who are given a lot of respect (including Don).

Megan's family does not seem to have much money, but Megan's dad is an academic and Megan appears to be well educated. She's also bilingual. This wouldn't impress someone like Pete's mother, who is old money and would view Megan as little better than a prostitute given that she had to work for a living before "marrying up." But it does impress Don and people like Ken and Peggy, who are middle class and not well traveled.

Jane strikes me as a classic gold digger, what Joan would be if she weren't so interesting. She's not from a wealthy background and doesn't seem to have a college degree. She's a bad secretary. But she's stunning, and she (and likely her family) were betting that a year or two as a secretary in some kind of NY firm (could have been a bank, a law firm, advertising, whatever) would land her a wealthy husband. She also sets her sights high from the start -- she doesn't mess around with the more junior men in the office. She knows exactly what she's doing but she's not from a wealthy family. She's looking to move up via marriage.

I also rewatched Mad Men recently and for some reason I thought Jane was a recent college grad.

People also need to remember that women's colleges up through the 1960s aren't always the Seven Sisters like Barnard, Vassar, Radcliffe that actually focused on women's education vs. training them up to be wives and mothers.

Plenty of junior 2 year womens colleges where you could just go for a bit where your parents still just hoped for you to meet a guy at a local university that was still mostly male. There were lots of "programs" where female students could take classes at those universities or colleges and the goal was still definitely the MRS degree.

My mom went to the former Russell-Sage college in Albany NY where the goal was to snag an engineer husband out of RPI

She was very open about it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the class commentary. It’s clear Joan is working class even though exceptionally beautiful and intelligent. Roger likes sleeping with her but never seriously offers her marriage or stability. He does marry Jane though, even though she is a secretary and Don marries Megan. Is it implied that Megan and Jane are higher social class?

I don't think you can think about class as this cleanly delineated on Mad Men. It's NY in the 1960s, not the 1860s. Class structures have already been upended a few times. There is the question of being "from money" but then there are also differences between "old money" and new money. You also have multiple self-made characters who are given a lot of respect (including Don).

Megan's family does not seem to have much money, but Megan's dad is an academic and Megan appears to be well educated. She's also bilingual. This wouldn't impress someone like Pete's mother, who is old money and would view Megan as little better than a prostitute given that she had to work for a living before "marrying up." But it does impress Don and people like Ken and Peggy, who are middle class and not well traveled.

Jane strikes me as a classic gold digger, what Joan would be if she weren't so interesting. She's not from a wealthy background and doesn't seem to have a college degree. She's a bad secretary. But she's stunning, and she (and likely her family) were betting that a year or two as a secretary in some kind of NY firm (could have been a bank, a law firm, advertising, whatever) would land her a wealthy husband. She also sets her sights high from the start -- she doesn't mess around with the more junior men in the office. She knows exactly what she's doing but she's not from a wealthy family. She's looking to move up via marriage.

I also rewatched Mad Men recently and for some reason I thought Jane was a recent college grad.

People also need to remember that women's colleges up through the 1960s aren't always the Seven Sisters like Barnard, Vassar, Radcliffe that actually focused on women's education vs. training them up to be wives and mothers.

Plenty of junior 2 year womens colleges where you could just go for a bit where your parents still just hoped for you to meet a guy at a local university that was still mostly male. There were lots of "programs" where female students could take classes at those universities or colleges and the goal was still definitely the MRS degree.

My mom went to the former Russell-Sage college in Albany NY where the goal was to snag an engineer husband out of RPI

She was very open about it

Correction - I should have looked it up first. My mom went to Russell-Sage in Troy which is next to Albany

There was a Sage college in Albany and there was apparently a merger just a few years ago to give RS an Albany location

(My mom passed in 2024)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never thought she was pretty. She looked fat and dressed like a hooker. Anything involving her felt so forced.

Seriously? She was gorgeous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never thought she was pretty. She looked fat and dressed like a hooker. Anything involving her felt so forced.

This makes no sense at all

This actually only makes it sound like you viewed her character as a woman who would probably never look at someone like you

Only it's actually just a fictional character, not the actual actress, there were costume designers dressing her and you only make yourself sound like an incel with greasy skin and back hair ... or someone paid to just continually denigrate anything successful and uniformly about American culture of any decade

It's really super easy to see you now, you need better writers, like the writers on Mad Men

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the class commentary. It’s clear Joan is working class even though exceptionally beautiful and intelligent. Roger likes sleeping with her but never seriously offers her marriage or stability. He does marry Jane though, even though she is a secretary and Don marries Megan. Is it implied that Megan and Jane are higher social class?

I don't think you can think about class as this cleanly delineated on Mad Men. It's NY in the 1960s, not the 1860s. Class structures have already been upended a few times. There is the question of being "from money" but then there are also differences between "old money" and new money. You also have multiple self-made characters who are given a lot of respect (including Don).

Megan's family does not seem to have much money, but Megan's dad is an academic and Megan appears to be well educated. She's also bilingual. This wouldn't impress someone like Pete's mother, who is old money and would view Megan as little better than a prostitute given that she had to work for a living before "marrying up." But it does impress Don and people like Ken and Peggy, who are middle class and not well traveled.

Jane strikes me as a classic gold digger, what Joan would be if she weren't so interesting. She's not from a wealthy background and doesn't seem to have a college degree. She's a bad secretary. But she's stunning, and she (and likely her family) were betting that a year or two as a secretary in some kind of NY firm (could have been a bank, a law firm, advertising, whatever) would land her a wealthy husband. She also sets her sights high from the start -- she doesn't mess around with the more junior men in the office. She knows exactly what she's doing but she's not from a wealthy family. She's looking to move up via marriage.

I also rewatched Mad Men recently and for some reason I thought Jane was a recent college grad.

People also need to remember that women's colleges up through the 1960s aren't always the Seven Sisters like Barnard, Vassar, Radcliffe that actually focused on women's education vs. training them up to be wives and mothers.

Plenty of junior 2 year womens colleges where you could just go for a bit where your parents still just hoped for you to meet a guy at a local university that was still mostly male. There were lots of "programs" where female students could take classes at those universities or colleges and the goal was still definitely the MRS degree.

My mom went to the former Russell-Sage college in Albany NY where the goal was to snag an engineer husband out of RPI

She was very open about it

Correction - I should have looked it up first. My mom went to Russell-Sage in Troy which is next to Albany

There was a Sage college in Albany and there was apparently a merger just a few years ago to give RS an Albany location

(My mom passed in 2024)

My MIL went to one of those schools. So did my FIL's aunt. They were called business schools, but I think the curriculum meant typing and how to format cover letters.