Over the course of this past season of Mad Men, my husband and I noticed that in times of duress, bafflement, or douchery, the characters on Mad Men would say, “What?” with varying inflection.
I guess we’ve somewhat ruined Mad Men for ourselves, because now when any character says, “What?” in any context, ie, even, “What’s the matter?” we dissolve into giggles. We began to wonder if there was a “What?” technician on the writing staff. Any time the writers would get to a moment and weren’t sure where to go with it, they would perhaps pick up a red phone, a direct line to the What Tech, and say, “Betty just said some immature and vaguely psychotic. Don’s retort should be…?” And the What Tech would reply, “Hmmm…let me just run the What Algorithm…Okay, according to my calculations, Don should reply with a soft, but aggravated, “What?” and scrunch his nose and eyes a little while doing so.”
When this past season was circling the drain, we agreed that it would be wonderful to capture every instance of, “What?” in some sort of tally, whether it’s just a count or a video montage of each, “What?” “What!” “What?!?” and “WHAT?!?!?!??!?!?!”
From our lips to God’s ears, apparently. Because of course someone on the internet has granted my wish. Here is a montage of supposedly every “What?” that Don Draper has uttered over the life of Mad Men. There are 46 “What?”s here, which honestly doesn’t even seem like all of them.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DCafQqHJA[/youtube]
Don may be the biggest “What”er, but all of the characters get an opportunity to sputter. The only way that this video could be better if EVERY instance from every character was captured. But this is an excellent start. So, thank you, random internet person with video editing skills and a buttload of free time. You made my week.
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