Then it allows the characters to be superimposed over an era. To breathe it into existence within scenes. Not like all the crap we watch where characters are representative of an era. These characters appear to actually exist within it. As motion pictures go by us, so go by the events.
When the news is announced of MLK being assassinated in this episode, Paul Newman is on stage giving a speech to the room full of advertisers. It continues the theme of Don and all those around him having no inkling of celebrity worship. It's another element of a by-gone attitude that contributes to the aura of other-worldliness.
No one approaches Newman. Just as Don didn't care to meet the Rolling Stones in an earlier episode. He merely cared why a girl backstage had become such a devotee of the band. He asked her questions from the angle that he once inherited asking his former lover turned heroin addict why she had taken so strongly to the drug.
Don looks at all things as art or shallow portrayals of such. He takes unto people as he may a series of signs representing different ad slogans to choose amongst.
Want to understand some of the mystery of the main character of this show? Look no further than the fact that he takes his own sensory experience more seriously than any fad or person or passing train. He's a well dressed man in an art gallery.
And here we are, watching, from a society that orbits, as if orbiting were the way to appreciate a thing.
