Don Draper - Draper and Women

Draper and Women

Draper met Betty Draper (née Hofstadt) when she was working as a model. Don surprised Betty when he purchased a fur she wore during a photo shoot, where Don was in attendance. This gesture appears to be the start of their relationship. Betty and Don are then married, and Betty soon gives birth to their first child, Sally. A few years later, Betty gave birth to their son, Bobby. In Season 3, Betty gave birth to a son named Eugene, after her recently-deceased father, with whom Don shared a mutually antagonistic relationship.

Don cheats on Betty repeatedly throughout Seasons 1 and 2. In Season 1, Draper is involved with Midge, a pot-smoking beatnik and illustrator who works out of her small, dingy apartment. Midge's beatnik lifestyle and friends do not appeal to Don. But, she offers him an escape from his high-pressure job. Don receives a bonus check of $2,500 from Sterling Cooper and asks her to vacation with him in Paris. However, Don changes his mind after realizing Midge is in love with a fellow beatnik, and instead stuffs the check into her blouse; telling her to 'go buy a car' with it, as he leaves the scene. Don doesn't see Midge again until Season 4, when Midge pretends to run into Don, hoping to sell him a painting in order to help fund her heroin addiction. He agrees to visit her apartment. But, after learning of her true intentions, he purchases a painting and leaves.

Also during Season 1, Don pursues Rachel Menken. She is Jewish and the daughter of Abraham Menken, the elderly founder of upscale Menken's department store. Rachel, 28, is educated, sophisticated, and a savvy businesswoman, assisting her father in running the family business. Despite bickering with her during initial business meetings, Draper becomes close with her and eventually begins an affair with her. She ends their affair on November 8, 1960, the night the 1960 Presidential election results are being tabulated. She leaves on a cruise to Europe and suddenly marries a Jewish man sometime before the beginning of Season 2.

In Season 2, Draper turns to an older woman, Bobbie Barrett. She is the wife of Jimmy Barrett, an insult comic loosely based on Rat Packer Joey Bishop, filming a commercial for one of Sterling Cooper's clients, Utz Potato Chips. They continue their affair, taking a trip to the beach at "Stony Brook" on Long Island, but their plans are interrupted by a car accident followed by his arrest for drunken driving. Unable to post bond with the cash on his person, Don reaches out to Peggy, who travels from Brooklyn to Long Island by car in the middle of the night and posts Don's bail. Peggy also 'boards' Bobbie until her injuries from the accident heal. Bobbie and Don continue their affair until the episode "Maidenform," when Bobbie lets slip that Draper's previous mistresses have been talking about his sexual prowess. Don, who values his privacy highly, is aghast that his extramarital escapades are being gossiped about, and immediately ends the affair. Don must continue his professional relationship with Bobbie and Jimmy, and the four of them (including Betty) meet at the Stork Club for a night out. At the end of the evening, Jimmy reveals to Betty that their spouses have had an affair. A horrified Betty confronts Don, but he repeatedly denies the accusations, which infuriates her.

Betty appears willing to put the suspicion behind her. But, when she coincidentally sees the commercial Jimmy made for Utz air on television, her anger is reignited. She calls her husband at work and tells him not to come home. Don moves into a hotel room, frequently sleeping in his office. Betty's father, Eugene, has another stroke, necessitating a visit from Betty, and keeping up the appearance of a happy marriage. Betty and Don pretend to be a happily married couple while staying at her father's home. In his growing senility, Eugene openly expresses his disdain for Don, saying, "He's got no people. You can't trust a man like that." After witnessing the rapid decline of her father, Betty seduces Don in the middle of the night, leading Don to believe that she has now forgiven him. When they arrive home, however, Betty tells a confused Don not to move back in. Betty later discovers that she is pregnant.

Don, impulsively, decides to join Peter Campbell on a business trip to Los Angeles. In California, Don meets a mysterious European viscount with a 21-year-old daughter named Joy. Despite telling Campbell that the trip is strictly business, Don joins Joy and her "jet set" family of self-described nomads at their lavish vacation home in Palm Springs. He sleeps with her the same night. Joy is topless in the pool one night, attempting to seduce Don again, despite being surrounded by other relatives and even small children, around their large pool. He later leaves Joy to visit Anna.

In Season 3, Don has an affair lasting several months with his daughter Sally's schoolteacher Suzanne Farrell. Their relationship builds slowly over several accidental meetings and conversations laden with innuendo. They finally consummate their relationship in September 1963. Don ends the affair with Suzanne on October 30, 1963. Believing that Betty and his children are out of town, Don plans a weekend get-away with Suzanne. While Suzanne waits in the car, Don enters his house to retrieve a suitcase. He is stunned to find Betty at home. Betty reveals to Don that she has found the key to the locked drawer in Don's desk. Betty reveals she has found the box of photographs and other evidence of his past life, as well as several hundred dollars in emergency escape funds, and she also has discovered that he has been lying to her. Don never returns to the car where Suzanne awaits him. He calls Suzanne the next day to break off the relationship, even though they have not been discovered, in an attempt to save his marriage.

Don's womanizing hits its peak during Season 4, which takes place in from 1964 to 1965. At the beginning of Season 4 in 1964, Don hires a prostitute to slap him around during sex. Roger's wife Jane Sterling also sets Don up with a young, beautiful friend named Bethany, thinking Don hasn't been on a date since his marriage ended. During one weekend of heavy drinking, Don goes to bed with one woman, blacks out, wakes up with a different woman in his bed, and has no idea what has happened. He continues to visit the prostitute and pay her, eventually 'setting up' Lane with a 'hooker' friend one night in his apartment.

During a visit to San Pedro, California to visit Anna, Don attempts to seduce Anna's 18-year-old niece, whom Don has known since she was a child. She refuses Don and instead tells him that Anna is dying of cancer.

When Don goes home drunk after an office Christmas party, he forgets the keys to his apartment. Don asks Allison, his secretary, to deliver the keys to him. He quickly seduces her that night on his couch. This later creates tension in their professional relationship when Don acts as if nothing happened. Confused and heartbroken over the affair, Allison decides she can no longer work for Don or the agency. She asks Don to write a letter of recommendation for her about another potential job. When his insensitivity offends her, Allison becomes greatly upset. She throws a brass cigarette dispenser at Don and calls him "a bad person" before quitting her job and storming out in tears. Don is visibly shaken by the encounter, and Allison is replaced. Don later tries to write a letter of apology to Allison, but then decides to forget about it. Allison is replaced by Ida Blankenship, Bert Cooper's former secretary, who later dies sitting up at her desk, shocking Don and the staff.

During Season 4, Don becomes friendly with Dr. Faye Miller, a consumer psychologist, he frequently works with. At the beginning of 1965, before she dates Don, she informs him, "you'll be married by the end of the year." After fending off his gentlemanly advances on several occasions, she begins a romantic relationship with him. During an existential crisis, Don reveals his checkered past. She sympathizes with him and offers emotional support. Faye however warns Don that she is "not good with kids and is inexperienced around them." At the end of that same episode, after she throws a tantrum, Sally runs down the hall at SCDP, where she trips and falls. Instead of running into her father's arms, she falls naturally into Don's new secretary, Megan's arms. Megan Calvet, previously worked as the lobby receptionist, but became Don's secretary after Blankenship's sudden death.

Don is no longer visiting prostitutes and seems to have settled down with Faye. Although Don seems to be in love with the classy and intelligent Faye, Megan seduces him in his office one night, telling him not to worry, she won't make a scene like Allison did. When Faye's consulting firm can no longer work with SCDP, she is excited because she and Don can be "out in the open" now with their relationship, during Episode 12.

During the Season 4 finale, "Tomorrowland," Faye believes their relationship is stronger than ever. However, Don's ex-wife, Betty Francis, suddenly fires Carla, the children's nanny since birth, and Don has to scramble to find a full-time nanny for his three kids during their visit to California (to sign the "sold" papers for Don's house in San Pedro, which he bought for Anna in the 1950's). Don remembers how Sally fell into her arms several months previously, and decides to take Megan with him so she can take the three kids to Disneyland, and watch them at the hotel pool. When he goes to Anna's house one last time, Anna's niece says Anna left him her diamond solitaire engagement ring (the one given to her by the real Don Draper upon their engagement). Don looks at the ring and is very touched by Anna's gift to him. He sleeps with Megan during the California trip and decides to propose with Anna's engagement ring, telling Megan that the ring is very special to him and that he "finally feels like himself" with her. Megan accepts, and Don returns to New York to let the partners and Joan know about his very sudden engagement. He telephones Faye and breaks off their relationship by informing her of his new engagement. Don also informs his ex-wife Betty, as she is packing up the last moving box from their one-time marital home, that he is engaged.