Don Draper is bored. You can see it in his eyes before he even leaves New York. By the time we get to Mad Men The Jet Set, which is the eleventh episode of the second season, the show decides to stop being a workplace drama for an hour and becomes a fever dream. It’s 1962. The world is changing, but Don is just drifting.
Most people remember this episode because of the house. That stunning, mid-century modern masterpiece in Palm Springs with the pool that looks like it belongs in a Slim Aarons photograph. But there's a lot more going on under the surface of this California detour than just cool architecture and linen suits. It's the moment Don Draper finally realizes he doesn't actually have to be Don Draper. He can just be... gone.
The California Dream vs. The New York Reality
New York is gray. It’s crowded. It’s full of Pete Campbell’s whining and Duck Phillips’ power plays. When Don and Pete head out west for a convention, the color palette shifts instantly. The light is different. The air feels thinner.
Pete is there to work. He’s wearing a suit that’s probably too heavy for the heat, clutching his briefcase like a life raft. Don? Don sees a girl. Well, he sees a woman—Joy. She’s younger, wealthy, and seemingly untethered to any kind of responsibility. She invites him to ditch the convention and head to Palm Springs with her "friends."
And he does it. He just walks away.
Honestly, this is the most "Dick Whitman" move Don makes in the early seasons. He doesn't call the office. He doesn't check in with Betty. He leaves his luggage with a confused Pete and vanishes into a silver Cadillac. It’s reckless. It’s also exactly what makes Mad Men The Jet Set so polarizing for fans. Some people hate how it breaks the pacing of the season, while others think it’s the most honest look at Don’s psyche we ever get.
Who Are These People Anyway?
Joy’s group is a collection of international nomads. They don't have jobs. They have "interests." They have trust funds and titles and European accents. They represent a level of wealth that Don, even with his high salary at Sterling Cooper, hasn't really encountered. It’s old money, but it’s nomadic.
They are the "Jet Set."
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The term wasn't just a buzzword; it was a specific social class that emerged with the advent of commercial jet travel. Before this, if you wanted to go to Europe, you took a boat. It took a week. Now? You’re there in hours. This group lives in a permanent state of transit. They have a house in Palm Springs, a flat in London, a villa in Rome.
Don is fascinated by them because they have no "where." They exist in the spaces between places. For a man who stole another man's identity and is constantly running from his past, this is the ultimate fantasy. He doesn't have to explain who he is because these people don't care. They don't even use last names half the time.
The Visual Language of the Desert
Director Phil Abraham and creator Matthew Weiner leaned hard into the aesthetics for this one. The house used in the episode is the Fox Residence (though often associated with the style of John Lautner or Richard Neutra). It’s all glass and concrete.
In New York, Don is framed by tight boxes—office cubicles, elevators, small apartments. In California, the frames disappear. The walls are windows. The indoors and outdoors blur together. It’s a physical manifestation of Don’s internal desire to break out of the "box" his life has become.
There’s a specific shot where Don is floating in the pool, and the camera looks down on him. He looks tiny. He looks like he’s finally being washed clean, or maybe he’s just drowning in the emptiness of it all. It’s one of the most iconic images in the entire series.
The Heat and the Haze
There is a sense of lethargy in this episode. People nap in the middle of the day. They drink because they’re thirsty, not just because it’s 5:00 PM. Don actually faints at one point.
The heat is a character. It forces a slow-motion quality onto the narrative. While the B-plot back in New York is moving fast—Duck is trying to engineer a merger between Sterling Cooper and British firm Putnam, Powell & Lowe—the California plot is standing still. It’s a deliberate juxtaposition. The future of the company is being decided in a board room while the star creative director is getting a tan and reading The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
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Why This Episode Matters for the Series Arc
If you skip Mad Men The Jet Set, you don't understand why Don goes back to California so many times later in the series. This is where the seed is planted.
California becomes Don’s "reset button."
But there’s a dark side to it. Joy and her friends are essentially vampires. Not literal ones, obviously, but they’re bored. They’re looking for new "specimens" to entertain them. Don is a handsome American mystery to them. Once they’ve analyzed him, they’ll move on to the next person.
When Don wakes up and sees the children—Joy has children, which is a shock—he realizes that this lifestyle isn't a permanent escape. It’s just another version of the life he’s already living, just with better furniture and less clothing. The kids are being raised by nannies, ignored by their parents, drifting just like he is. It’s a mirror he doesn't want to look into.
The "Dick Whitman" Reveal
The episode ends with Don visiting Anna Draper. This is the big payoff.
We’ve known about the name swap since Season 1, but we didn't know what happened to the real Don Draper’s wife. Finding out that she’s alive, knows the truth, and actually likes Dick is the emotional core of the season.
In the Palm Springs house, he was a nameless guest. With Anna, he is finally himself. He doesn't have to wear the suit. He doesn't have to perform. He can just sit on the floor and fix a chair. The contrast between the cold, sterile luxury of the Jet Set and the warm, cluttered, dusty house of Anna Draper tells you everything you need to know about what Don actually needs versus what he thinks he wants.
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Common Misconceptions About The Jet Set
A lot of viewers think Joy was a hallucination. I get why. The episode has a surreal, hazy quality, and Joy seems almost too perfect—a beautiful woman who just hands him a drink and asks for nothing.
But she’s real.
The show uses these "fringe" characters to show how disconnected Don is from the average person. Another misconception is that this episode is "filler." On the contrary, the merger plot that starts here is what leads to the Season 3 finale, which is arguably the best episode of the show. Without the events of the Jet Set, the moves Duck Phillips makes wouldn't have the same weight.
Actionable Insights for Mad Men Fans
If you’re rewatching the series or diving in for the first time, pay attention to these specific details in this episode to get the most out of it:
- Watch the book: Don is reading The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It’s about Stoicism and the idea that you can find peace within yourself regardless of external chaos. Don is trying to find that peace, but he’s looking for it in a swimming pool instead of his own soul.
- The Clothing Shift: Look at Don’s wardrobe. He starts in a classic gray suit and ends up in a polo shirt and slacks. By the time he gets to Anna’s, he’s almost unrecognizable. Clothing in Mad Men is armor; when Don takes it off, he’s vulnerable.
- The Sound Design: Listen to the background noise. In New York, it’s phones ringing and traffic. In California, it’s wind, water, and the clinking of ice. The silence in the desert is deafening for a man who uses noise to drown out his thoughts.
- The "Nomad" Theme: Compare Joy’s family to the Drapers. Both are dysfunctional, but one is rooted in a suburban lie while the other is floating in a global truth. Neither is actually happy.
Mad Men The Jet Set isn't just a vacation for the characters. It’s a structural break that allows the show to breathe. It reminds us that while the 1960s were about the Space Race and the Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy administration, for some people, it was just about finding a better place to hide. Don Draper is the king of hiding, and California is the biggest closet he ever found.
To truly understand the impact of this episode, you have to look at the "Before and After." Before this trip, Don was trying to make his marriage to Betty work in a traditional sense. After California, and after seeing Anna, he realizes that the "traditional" life is the very thing suffocating him. He comes back to New York a different man—more detached, more cynical, and ready to let the old version of Sterling Cooper burn so something new can grow.
Next time you watch, don't just look at the architecture. Look at the way Don looks at the kids in that house. That's the moment the fantasy breaks. That's the moment he realizes he has to go home, even if he doesn't have a home to go to anymore.