enter the fray: our reader discussion forum
And They Keep on Copying Sopranos
by lucabrasi

Episode 5 "The New Girl" had perhaps the biggest lift yet:

On a secluded country highway, Don Draper and an amour had a car-flipping crash that created a crisis.

On "The Sopranos," it was Tony and Adrianna who had that crash (they weren't trysting, but Chris wasn't buying), and later, (in an episode written by "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner), it was Tony and Chris who had a crash -- allowing Tony to kill the injured and helpless Chris.

So blatant was the copying here that I really think it was an "homage" from Weiner, to "The Sopranos" and to himself, and it came with a "twist": how will Don Draper get out of this scenario, given that he lacks a gangster's murderous clout?

P.S. The show has flirted with Hitchcock references, and this episode had a big one: for his visit to an outlying police station after the crash (with a DUI charge in possible play), Jon Hamm's Don Draper was costumed in Cary Grant's famous gray suit/gray tie/gray socks outfit from "North by Northwest," also about a womanizing ad man who spends a night in a New York coastal jail facing DUI charges.

View complete thread