• Early on, Pete cuts off wife Trudy's questions by snapping, "Trudy, stop it with the Ellery Queen."
Ellery Queen was, of course, the fictional detective and pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, author/star of over 20 novels and at the time of Pete's remark, probably the most well-known American detective character this side of Nero Wolfe. Two Queen mystery titles could serve as alternative-titles for this Mad Men episode: Calamity Town and The Devil To Pay.
•
It was nice to see news footage other than the usual Walter
Cronkite-voice-breaking moment on CBS in reporting JFK's assassination. Chet
Huntley was shown leading NBC's coverage with as assist from Frank McGee and a
man caught in the middle: Bill Ryan, a local WNBC news anchor in New York who
would have been doing the local news at the time the news broke. Look again and
you’ll see McGee on this phone with a "Robert" who’s on the scene in Dallas:
That’s Robert MacNeill, who’d later co-host The MacNeill-Lehrer NewsHour on
PBS.
• Finally, the episode’s closing-credits music was Skeeter Davis's shattering 1963 hit "The End of the World." Davis was a Kentucky-born country singer who achieved cross-over pop stardom with this song, produced by Chet Atkins. While the title of the song was appropriate for the plot of this week’s Mad Men – so many characters feeling that the world was ending with the death of a young, inspiring President – the lyrics Davis sings after the music faded out last night, unheard by the TV audience, are particularly apt for stark moment when Betty told Don she didn't love him anymore:
"Why do the birds go on singing/Why do the stars shine above/Don’t they know it’s the end of the world/It ended when I lost your love."
--Ken Tucker
