Part of the whole show is that there is no sexual revolution. But a young guy hitting on Joan is not a novelty, and I think what I was trying to say is, she wasn’t in the mood. That’s what that was for me.

So I’m always trying to ask, What was it like to be an adult and have this thing happen? That was the original intention of the show. And the first premise is, nothing new is happening. The second premise is: Oh my God, I don’t like this. And the last premise is, I have to go on, and this is the way it’s going to be, and it can’t be undone—so am I going to join it? Like Roger? Am I that kind of personality, where I’m like, bring me whatever’s coming?

The weirdest thing about all of this is that I do have something to say and I say it in the show, but I really try very deeply to not judge people that I am writing about. And that means characters don’t help each other through scenes. Everybody has a point of view. And the show captures a lot of private moments. That behavior, it’s real.

Most of the discussion last season among the critics was about Don: Had he congealed into some stiff kind of hero, or was this an evolution in the show? What was your interaction with the question of “What on Earth is happening to Don?”

More than ever in the show, I felt like the events of 1968 could not be denied from personal experience. Before that, plenty of people are just living their lives and just ignoring a lot of things throughout the sixties. And by the time 1968 comes, an international revolution is going on. There is chaos. And my take was, People think Don is going to just retract. But actually, society is in the same state that Don is in.

The revolution is defeated in 1968: There is cultural change, but the tanks roll into Prague, the students go back to school, Bobby Kennedy comes out with an extremely radical agenda right before he is murdered. You do not hear a politician speaking this way before or after, running in a real party. I mean, maybe “Yes we can,” but that’s still not the same kind of rhetoric. Martin Luther King, Jr. being murdered was so shameful to white people—no one was wondering who did it, or how it happened. Rather, they were waiting for it, and then there it was, and they were part of it in some way.

So Don is back where he was in the pilot: He is in a marriage with someone who loves him, it is one-sided, and he is seeking comfort from this other woman. Why is he doing this? Because he is in a state of chaos. Part of it could be because he is afraid of dying; part of it could be that he cannot believe that he can be loved. Love is at the bottom of this whole thing; it is the constant rhetoric of the sixties.

What you’re watching with Don is a representation, to me, of American society. He is steeped in sin, haunted by his past, raised by animals, and there is a chance to revolt. And he cannot stop himself.