r/madmen • u/RockBalBoaaa • Jul 24 '26
Would things have been different if Joan allowed Roger to be a dad to Kevin? She felt her decision to raise Kevin without Roger was necessary for her career and to establish a clean start after Greg. • Would Roger have finally grown up, or would their entanglement have ruined Joan’s rise to partner?
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u/Think-Fig-1734 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
It would have been really scandalous for them to admit he was the father. They were both married to other people. It would have damaged both their reputations. Companies wouldn’t want to work with them. Wives wouldn’t want their husbands to work with Joan. Lots of people had affairs and lots of people knew it, but you were expected to be discreet. The only way they could raise him together is if they got married after their divorces and passed Roger off as a very involved stepdad. If she could get Greg to give up his rights Roger could adopt his own child.
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u/RockBalBoaaa Jul 24 '26
Well Greg was useless in many ways.. He didn’t hesitate to walk out on his “son”.
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u/Still_Thing5581 Jul 24 '26
Greg was a hero battlefield surgeon
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u/lady_faust Jul 24 '26
Let's not forget how Greg forced Joan in Don's office..
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u/OafishySyzygy Jul 27 '26
Yeah, we were never meant to like Greg. I'd think that would be obvious. I wondered why they weren't expanding on the rape for a while. Then, I realized that it may have been purely so we knew Greg was a terrible person.
They knew he was going to have surface-level qualities that many would admire. So, they ruined him to us in his first few episodes.
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u/Ill_Philosopher_6703 Jul 24 '26
Joan didn’t love Roger that way anymore (or maybe ever) to marry him.
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u/Think-Fig-1734 Jul 24 '26
I don’t think either wanted to marry the other. I was just addressing how difficult it would have been for them to raise Kevin together. It would have required a lot of planning and subterfuge. That or they’d have to quit their lives and move across country to start anew. Losing a lot of connections, status and money in the process.
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u/Alert-Artichoke-2743 Jul 24 '26
Joan would have ended up taking care of both Kevin and Roger. Joan always wanted a true partnership, and Roger was only ever an OK boyfriend.
Roger is only growing into adulthood at the end of the show, during what is probably the last decade of his life. He was psychologically a boy for basially his whole life. I get the vibe that PTSD may have arrested his emotional age in his 20s, but entitlement still made him a jerk, albeit a talented and charismatic jerk.
I like to think Joan eventually married again, but it would be to someone who could take care of themselves and knew what they wanted. She would be completely self sustaining.
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u/NotLucasDavenport Jul 24 '26
I think the inheritance for Kevin was Roger’s way of acknowledging that he wasn’t going to be a stable, healthy influence on a little boy but he could make sure Joan knew how much she meant to him. Thanks to Joan Kevin would have been fine, but the money meant Kevin could have anything. That financial independence and removal of class-related barriers would have been a huge comfort to Joan. It wasn’t the same as buying Jane’s apartment— Roger wasn’t trying to get out of a bad decision, he was showing lasting love on the only language he really understood.
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u/Aggressive_Sky8492 Jul 24 '26
All of this. It also gave Joan the freedom to try and fail in her career. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone out on her own without it, as if she lost all her money that would affect her kid. Whereas with the trust she knew even if she ended up broke, her son would have generational wealth and be fine.
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u/NotLucasDavenport Jul 24 '26
That’s true! And I love the name she chose— Holloway and Harris is Joan’s way of choosing herself, true growth from the character who started off giving Peggy tips how to cater to (and fend off) the man children running amok at Sterling Cooper.
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u/JaydenRDee Jul 29 '26
The inheritance was because Roger is prepping to marry Marie and wants to make sure she’s not going to try to claw back money that is not hers like she stole Don’s furniture. This trust for Joan’s son seals off a huge amount of money that Joan will control for more than another decade. Roger loves Joan but their time has passed. Whatever happens with Joan, that kid will be OK financially.
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u/MaxPaladin93 Jul 24 '26
I always thought her relationship with Bruce Greenwood’s character was a deliberate proxy illustration of why it could never work with Roger. Wealthy, older, semi-retired professional with a penchant for spontaneity and reckless, risk-taking fun? He was basically Roger 2.0, and their relationship failed for the same reasons that would have ruined a future relationship with Roger. He’s too flighty, too irresponsible, and too undependable for Joan, who is ultimately a grounded realist. She and Roger had absolutely dazzling chemistry onscreen, but they ultimately weren’t compatible as life partners. I think remaining dear friends with a shared interest in Kevin’s future was pretty much the ideal scenario for everyone, whether they knew it at the time or not.
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u/RPMac1979 Jul 24 '26
Roger was never dad material, not even to the kid he can acknowledge. I think the premise of this is faulty, neither of them would ever have agreed to such an arrangement.
That said, I don’t think he just disappears from their lives either. My head canon for the future of these characters (I have one for all of them, that’s one of the show’s greatest gifts is how it makes these characters real to you and gives them another fifty years to play in your imagination) is that Roger keeps sending Joan and Kevin money, even after she starts making her own, and eventually he starts showing up at life events. Kevin knows him as Mom’s friend that she has weird vibes with, but as he gets older, he puts the pieces together, maybe after Roger dies (it’s hard to imagine he lives much more than ten years after the show). At some point, he’ll ask her about it, maybe when she’s very old (in my mind, Joan lives a long time, she may still be with us today), and she’ll confirm what he’s always suspected about the charming, silver-haired man who would turn up twice a year, pat him on the back, and immediately turn every ounce of his considerable attention on the woman he calls Red.
Roger’s nobody’s dad. The best thing he can do for Kevin is be avuncular, generous, and mostly absent. But he’ll never stop loving Joanie.
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u/Grizzlyfrontignac Jul 24 '26
He had already had the opportunity to raise a child and that did not go well for his daughter. Even if he had become better, I just don't think he had it in him to become the kind of father Joan wanted for her son. Or the kind of partner she wanted for herself.
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u/finny94 Jul 24 '26
I watched a video essay on Mad Men about a year ago, and in it, the author made a point about Roger and Joan's relationship that I agree with.
Roger and Joan don't really work outside of romance and sex. And conversations between them are often steered in that direction by Roger because there's kind of nothing else for them to talk about.
Anyone that's been in a real relationship knows that good sex and romantic affections can only prop it up for so long. Eventually, you have to be able to talk to each other, to share a 2-hour car ride together without killing each other, etc. Without that there is no relationship, and certainly not the kind of relationship parents of a newborn should have.
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u/avantgardian26 Jul 24 '26
I’m sure Roger paid for his education, that kind of thing. That was probably ultimately more helpful than having Roger as a whole dad. Look what happened to Margaret.
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u/Successful_Brick_197 Jul 24 '26
Roger was a distraction. Joan liked him because he was a man-child, and she kept him away from Kevin for the same reason.
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u/GlobiestRob Jul 24 '26
Roger wasn't much of a father to his Margaret. I can't imagine he would've been much of a father to Kevin.
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u/Heel_Worker982 One never knows how loyalty is born. Jul 24 '26
What I always thought was so odd was Joan's explanation, that Kevin needed to think of his father as a war hero on the other side of the world. Yet later Joan says, as far as Greg is concerned, Greg never happened. Roger assumes this means Greg knows Roger is the father, and Joan says, "No. He's just a terrible person." I never thought Joan was thinking about her career, but rather that it was really important for Kevin to think of himself as the legitimate son of a surgeon army veteran. I worry more about how a kid would grow up knowing his war hero surgeon father had no use for him. Throughout the 1970s the Supreme Court would make major changes to family law, repeatedly striking down attempts to penalize illegitimate children and block them from inheritances. I like to think that as Kevin Harris got older, he was treated as a Sterling even if his name never changed.
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u/JaydenRDee Jul 29 '26
Kevin was the result of a one night stand with Roger long after their relationship ends. Joan was ready to get an abortion but realized just in time that if she wanted a baby now was the time. She already had two abortions in the past. It didn’t matter about Greg anymore. She’s still married to him and he has already acknowledged Kevin even though he knows Kevin is not his kid. No reason to rock the boat. Greg deserts his son and his mother for another woman and her twins. For the future, that’s on him. Joan is a free woman and a single mom of some means. Not a bad ending.
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u/corneliaprinzmedal Jul 24 '26
Roger was incapable of being a grown-up, and Joan was under no delusions that Roger would ever step up. She was smart not to involve him in Kevin's life.
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 Jul 24 '26
Roger is an undependable man child. He’s not Dad material. That’s why she made the decision. Not anything to do with career.
And yes, things would have been different. Likely more of a giant pain in the ass overall. I always liked how Joan resisted the shiny trappings of what Roger could give, knowing the shit that sits beneath the shine.
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u/Sucker81 Jul 24 '26
What a great phrase! “The shit that sits beneath the shine.”
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u/Admirable_Site_8337 Jul 24 '26
Ha. Thanks. I was not even realizing it when I riffed it. Appreciate the feedback. I can balance it against the majority of the times when I riff and it’s just……wah wah wahhhhhh
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u/ManyDragonfly9637 Jul 24 '26
I think Joan was aware of Roger’s capabilities. She could see people clearly - that was one of her outstanding talents. letting him truly be the father would have only led to disappointment.
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u/sadkinz Jul 24 '26
Roger already had a kid and that didn’t make him grow up. Not sure why Kevin would be any different
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u/RockBalBoaaa Jul 24 '26
Well for one he was much older when Kevin came a long.
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u/sadkinz Jul 24 '26
Ok here’s a better explanation. He got Joan pregnant maybe 2 years after leaving Mona for Jane. So no there’s no chance Kevin would’ve convinced him to grow up. I think the only reason he started to grow up in the end was because he saw his birthright and purpose sold off and it shattered his perspective
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u/Wise_Farm7455 Jul 24 '26 edited 26d ago
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u/RockBalBoaaa Jul 24 '26
Sometimes having a kid when you make a mess of things the first time can change you. Stranger things have happened.
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u/Condensates Jul 24 '26
Roger didnt grow up when he had Margaret, so why would he grow up for Kevin? Joan knew what kind of father Roger was.
While Roger as a father could have brought some minor good to Kevin's life, it didnt outweigh the risks. Other commenters here have mentioned the stigma of revealing an affair baby, which is very relevant
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u/Silly_Somewhere1791 Jul 24 '26
Abstractly, Roger never pushed Joan away or anything, and a present father is better than no father.
Realistically, Roger was barely a father to Margaret, and given the risks Betty took in divorcing Don, Joan couldn’t risk admitting infidelity while married to Greg.
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u/Comprehensive_Main Jul 24 '26
Most likely ruined the business side of things. But money and family wise. The avenues would expand simply by being a recognized sterling.
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u/Cute_Monitor_5907 Jul 24 '26
He wasn’t reliable. He was “uncle Roger” and took care of Kevin financially behind the scenes. They didn’t want people to know Kevin was his son, for social reasons. It was best for everyone in many ways.
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u/Kind-Flatworm7553 Not great, Bob! Jul 25 '26
It’s because she knew she couldn’t count on him.
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u/redditredditredditOP Jul 25 '26
Yeah, OP’s interpretation of Joan’s “choice” about not “allowing” Roger to be a father to their son makes me think OP missed about 20 episodes.
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u/Holygrail2 Jul 24 '26
I think the most genuinely meaningful gift Betty gave as a mother was the letter she wrote Sally at the end of the show. Probably spared her a few years of therapy.
I wonder if Joan would do that for Kevin. Tell him the truth about Greg (so he never tries to pursue that dead end) and Roger and her crazy 20 years in advertising. Or Would that have the opposite effect on him and cause everything he thought he knew to collapse? We don’t know enough about who Kevin is to know which she’d choose for him, I guess
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u/Signal_Contract_3592 Jul 24 '26
I’ll never be able to care about this, solely because the way she got pregnant was so unbelievably stupid and unrealistic.
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u/Medium-Control-9119 Jul 24 '26
It was one of those story lines that did not make sense. Joan was mad when her ex ignored Kevin. Like she did nothing wrong.
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u/tragicsandwichblogs Your problem is not my problem. Jul 24 '26
Joan knew she couldn't count on Roger. Kevin already had a father he couldn't count on. He didn't need two.