Today, we look at how Matthew Weiner used Allison so well on Mad Men.
Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of pop culture history that interests me that doesn’t quite fit into the other features.
Allison, played wonderfully by Alexa Alemanni, was the perfect secretary for Don Draper in Mad Men Season 3.
Historically, marriages between men and their secretaries tended to “work out” well. Quotes because I’m talking about the past, so the definition of “work out” is very vague. These marriages might have been quite happy, or they might have been miserable and they simply didn’t get divorced, so all I mean is that they tended to result in marriages that lasted.
The reasons are obvious, as these were women whose whole job was to bring order to their boss’ life, and so when they married them, that carried over. They knew them so well that they also tended to know where the bodies were buried, proverbially speaking, so they had a good deal of security in their marriages.
So therefore, once Don Draper was divorced in Season 4 of Mad Men, it made perfect sense for him to marry his secretary. That was a cliche, but it was a cliche because it happened ALL THE TIME, and Don was very much living the cliched life of a divorced man in Season 4.
And, sure enough, he DID marry his secretary, but his NEXT secretary. This is because Matthew Weiner knew very well that Allison would have been TOO good of a wife for Don. Had he married Allison, she would have been able to put up with Don’s terrible behavior, so Weiner needed a secretary who COULDN’T/WOULDN’T. So he brought in Megan (Jessica Pare).
I tend to think that Weiner became far too fascinated with Pare, and thus her character had too large of an influence on the later seasons, but her main purpose was excellent, the new young wife who WOULDN’T allow Don to just settle into a comfortable married lifestyle like Allison would have.
So Weiner had to get rid of Allison, so he had Don have a drunken one-night stand with her, and then basically treat her like she was nothing the next day (Allison clearly was prepared to not, like, live happily ever after with Don. She was very much not naive, but she at least thought that the dude wouldn’t treat her like their night together meant NOTHING, and, okay, she likely DID think that there was a CHANCE at them living happily ever after together). He then gave her her Christmas bonus in cash, which she saw as him treating her like a prostitute (that legitimately WASN’T his intent, but that doesn’t matter, of course, just how SHE saw it). When she then saw him flirting with Fran, a research scientist working for the firm, she went off on Don, and so she was let go (there’s a really good bit where he tells her she can write any recommendation letter she wants and he’ll sign it, but she is even more irked that he wouldn’t write the recommendation letter himself, so even that last interaction is acrimonious, with her telling him that he was a bad person).
This got her out of the way, and moved Megan into the role of the cliched “boss marrying his secretary” plot (even giving us the amazing bit in Season 4 where Don could choose between Fran, an age appropriate, smart beautiful doctor who would challenge him, or his much younger, gorgeous secretary, and Don went for the easy choice, because of COURSE he did).
And because Megan wasn’t his secretary that long, Don didn’t have the time to realize that Megan wasn’t going to play the role that Allison WOULD have gladly played, but he just assumed that she would, and that, of course, leads to Don and Megan’s unhappy marriage and eventual divorce.
It was really strong writing by Weiner.
If anyone has any pop culture bit that you’d like me to discuss, drop me a line at brian@poprefs.com
