photo via amctv.com

The fifth season of MAD MEN premiered last night on AMC with a two-hour special, and Don Draper did nothing to change our minds about his relationship potential. Peggy may worry that he’s a kinder, cuddlier Draper, but we have no such concerns. After all, she didn’t see him resolve a domestic dispute by pretend-raping his wife. (What was up with that weird retro porn scene anyway?!) Here are our top ten reasons why Don Draper would make a terrible boyfriend:

1. He drinks and smokes constantly, and we’ve never seen him even pop a mint, let alone brush his teeth. Imagine the morning breath.
2. Oh wait, that’s right: he’d never sleep over.
3. Which is probably because he knows that if you saw his un-slick bed-head (we imagine it’d look something like this), you’d never have sex with him again.
4. Zero sense of humor. Zip. Then again, if Don Draper started to smile a lot, it might look like this — you got a rare glimpse of it in last night’s episode when he was shaving. No wonder he doesn’t tell a lot of jokes.
5. No cunnilingus. (Just a wild guess.)
6. Rampant — pathological, even — infidelity. In fact, this could really be points 1 through 10 as far as we’re concerned, but that wouldn’t make for a very entertaining list.
7. All his anger and denial and repression might look good on the surface (again we reference the dorky smile), but can you imagine living with that on a daily basis? It’s way too much existential angst for a man who doesn’t believe in therapy (or surprise parties). In fact, the closest he came to dealing with his issues (and how he’d roll his eyes at the word “issues”) — one of his major issues being that his mom was a prostitute and his dad was too cheap to spring for a condom — was when he asked a prostitute to slap him during sex. Talk about baggage, Oedipus.
8. He once said, “I don’t feel anything.” And it wasn’t because he’d fallen asleep on his arm. Sure, lots of women fantasize about changing a man, but that’s too much damn work. The dude flat-lined already.
9. He’s kind of a fuddy duddy old square despite it all. (Remember that scene in the jazz club with his downtown artist mistress? Not to mention his stony reaction to his swingin’ surprise party last night.)
10. He dates by type and you can never be all of them — in fact, he doesn’t want you to be all of them. He prefers to date one type at a time and then move on. He’s cycled through the all-American dream girl-slash-model, the bohemian artist, the wealthy sophisticated heiress, the mother figure, the accomplished peer, his mirror image in a skirt (Bobbie), the swooning secretary… As Faye told him at the end of season four, he only likes the beginnings of things — and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.

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