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He switched with a guy in the war – the real Don Draper!

Back when advertising was advertising….

I love this analysis of Mad Men – on NJ.com:

Early in the third season of “Mad Men,” ’60s ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) finds himself bonding with a stranger about the difficulty of fitting into high society.

“It’s different on the inside,” the man tells him.

From NJ.com:

mad men season 3

It’s easy to admire the surface qualities of the period — how imposing Don looks with his Brylcreem hair and sharp suits, how Don’s boss Roger Sterling (John Slattery) inhales booze and cigarettes, how curvaceous office manager Joan (Christina Hendricks) seems to rule Sterling Cooper through sexual magnetism alone — but “Mad Men” always plunges much deeper into its ’60s world.

We know that Don is an identity thief, one who seems like a master of the universe but has an instinct to run at the first sign of trouble. We know that Roger’s lifestyle has already given him a couple of heart episodes, and that he engineered the sale of the Sterling Cooper agency to a British firm to help finance his silly midlife crisis. And we know that Joan’s powers repeatedly reached their limits last season, when she wasn’t even considered for a job at which she’d have been perfect, when ex-flame Roger undermined her ability to run the office because he wanted to sleep with Don’s incompetent secretary, and when her fiance raped her on the floor of Don’s office because he didn’t like how inferior he often felt in her presence.

That contrast between appearance and reality — between the hypnotic ad campaigns Don writes and the actual products — is still very much at the forefront of the third season, which actually gets off to a stronger start than the series’ celebrated second.

In case you’ve not seen Season 2 – catch up via On-demand and get ready for Season 3, starting this Sunday.