Nixon vs. Kennedy (11 Oct. 2007)

Election night arrives and the staff of Sterling Cooper has a party while watching the returns. The election is close and it's obviously going to be a long night. Now a senior partner in ... See full summary »

Director:

Alan Taylor

Writers:

Matthew Weiner (creator), Lisa Albert,

Stars:

Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser

Cast

Episode cast overview, first billed only:
Jon Hamm	...	Don Draper
Elisabeth Moss	...	Peggy Olson
Vincent Kartheiser	...	Pete Campbell
January Jones	...	Betty Draper
Christina Hendricks	...	Joan Holloway
Bryan Batt	...	Salvatore Romano
Michael Gladis	...	Paul Kinsey
Aaron Staton	...	Ken Cosgrove
Rich Sommer	...	Harry Crane
Maggie Siff	...	Rachel Menken
Robert Morse	...	Bertram Cooper
Alison Brie	...	Trudy Campbell
Mark Moses	...	Herman 'Duck' Phillips
Troy Ruptash	...	Lieutenant Donald Draper
Alexa Alemanni	...	Allison

Storyline

Election night arrives and the staff of Sterling Cooper has a party while watching the returns. The election is close and it's obviously going to be a long night. Now a senior partner in the firm, Don Draper must hire a new head of account services, a post that Pete Campbell yearns for. Aware of Draper's secret past, he tries to strong-arm him into giving him the job. With his secret out, Don panics and he asks Rachel Menken to run away with him. Regaining his composure, Don calls Pete's bluff leading to a confrontation with Bert Cooper.

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Plot Keywords:

id tag | switched identities | dismissal | homecoming | blackmail | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

11 October 2007 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Weiner Bros., Lionsgate Television, American Movie Classics (AMC)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

46 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Action takes place on November 8th, 1960, the day of the Nixon/Kennedy presidential election.

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Goofs

We have seen a photo of Dick and Adam Whitman dated 1944. Adam appears to be about 8 or 9 years old. In this episode Dick/Don looks out at the train platform in 1950, at his stepmother Abigail, her husband, "Uncle Mack," and Adam, who still appears to be 8 or 9.

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Connections

References Can-Can (1960)

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Soundtracks

"Metro Polka"
(uncredited)
Written by Vaughn Horton (as George Vaughn)
Performed by Frankie Laine
played during office party

User Reviews

The truth about Don Draper

Over the course of one season, Mad Men has proved to be particularly good at mixing bits of American history with the characters' private tragedies. This aspect comes to head in the penultimate episode, Nixon vs. Kennedy, which trumps The Hobo Code as the essential chapter of the season for the importance of the major revelation it contains.

As the title suggests, the big event of the episode is Election Night, which the men at Sterling Cooper are watching in the office while throwing a party. Don, now a senior partner, also has to worry about finding a new head of the accounts department, and chooses his old acquaintance Herman "Duck" Phillips (former Desperate Housewives regular Mark Moses) for the job, which Pete Campbell is after as well. Using information he has gathered thanks to a letter he stole from the office, he confronts Don and threatens to blackmail him with a piece of information that is shown to the viewer through flashbacks: a battle in the Korean war which killed one Donald Draper, whose identity was then taken over by one of his soldiers, Dick Whitman.

The Korea flashback is one of the episode's strongest points, using the show's trademark visual flair to frame a couple of scenes that are brutally intense, deliberately clashing with the superficial cool of the '60s. On a narrative level, praise is due for the long awaited final reveal concerning the Dick/Don mystery, the answer proving to be as riveting and thoughtful as all the clues seemed to indicate.

Back in the present, the Nixon/Kennedy "war" is a great way to ground the plot in historic reality, providing ample ground for another conflict, that between Don and Pete, acted out with gusto by Hamm and Kartheiser. Also noteworthy is the addition of Moses to the cast, a cool and charismatic contrast to his creepy Desperate Housewives character. In short, a great foreshadowing of the season finale.