When Pete makes a reference to the ads for the new Penn Station looking like they came ‘right out of Metropolis,’ he is referring to Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film from Weimar Germany.

Metropolis is a classic example of the film aesthetic of German Expressionism. The movement, characterized by jutting angles, a machinized world, a helpless public and domineering structures, makes Pete’s parallel an apt one. The buildings in Metropolis, inhabited by the rich, tower above the proletariat who are overshadowed both literally and figuratively by the authoritarial shapes. Peggy and her Brooklyn paramour referencing a world inhabited by robots later on in the episode only serve to underline this seemingly throwaway reference.

Given that Don even says to the new developers that dissent to their new project  would just be a formality, Weiner seems to suggest that the new Penn Station is an idea drawn up by the rich and imposed on a public unable to fight back. 

Compare and contrast.

• footnote - by Natasha Simons

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