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<em>Mad Men</em> Is Filming: What Clues Are In These Photos?

Jen Carlson

Published Oct 25, 2012

Modified Oct 25, 2012

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Jen Carlson

Published Oct 25, 2012

Modified Oct 25, 2012

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Hawaiian Hamm (via Instagram)

Some photos of Jon Hamm and Jessica Paré filming season 6 of Mad Men have popped up, and since the show isn't returning until next year sometime, we're digging through them for some clues. You can see the photos here—in them, you'll notice a few things:

THE BOOK:In previous seasons, Don has been spotted reading Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara; Odds Against by Dick Francis; The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict; Exodus by Leon Uris; The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe; The Fixer by Bernard Malamud; and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carré. In these new photos he's seen reading Dante's Inferno on the beach in Hawaii. Specifically, he's reading a paperback version of John Ciardi's translation—first published in 1954, and was in paperback by 1964. This means Draper, next to his bikini-clad wife sipping on a fruity cocktail, is reading lines like:

"The man who lies asleep/will never waken fame, and his desire/and all his life drift past him like a dream/and the traces of his memory fade from time/like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream."
Your soul is sunken in that cowardice/that bears down many men, turning their course/and resolution by imagined perils/as his own shadow turns the frightened horse."
"I am the way into the city of woe. I am the way to a forsaken people. I am the way into eternal sorry."
"The double grief of a lost bliss/is to recall its happy hour in pain."
"Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the Sun/in the glory of his shining our hearts poured/a bitter smoke..."
"O sun which clears all mists from troubled sight/such joy attends your rising that I feel/as grateful to the dark as to the light."
"A man prepared is a man hurt by delay."

THE YEAR: Let's try to nail down what year were going to be meeting back up with the Drapers in. The last season ended in 1967, and previously Matthew Weiner has flat out declared that the entire series will end (most likely with season 7) with an old Don Draper (possibly in present time, in his 80s). That means between the premiere of season 6, and the finale of season 7, Weiner has about 50 years to play with. As for now, we'll still be nestled in nostalgia, as Megan and Don are sporting late 1960s attire in these new shots.

THE VIBE: So what's going on with the Drapers? The final scene of season 5 showed Don leaving Megan at a commercial shoot he landed for her, and sitting at a bar alone, when a younger woman approaches him to ask if he's alone, as Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Twice" plays:

Some may say that Hawaii is where couples go when they're trying to save their marriage, and that things aren't going so well if you're day drinking on the beach as your husband reads Dante's Inferno! But, maybe that's just how the Draper's roll.

Now, whose wedding is Don observing in those final photos from the shoot?

Tagged

don draper

jessica pare

jon hamm

mad men

megan draper

Jen Carlson

Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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