Conversations About Mad Men

May 29, 2012

Team, I’m going to ignore the fact that I find the Joan storyline to be incredulous for a second to focus on Peggy, who has been, for the length of this show, both a protege and a female mirror of Don. Last season’s “The Suitcase,” when Don really hit the bottom of the Plath Bell Jar and found himself sleeping on Peggy’s lap after losing Anna Draper is one of the best Mad Men episodes of all time, and it’s largely because of the strength of the bond between those two characters (and actors).

She told Don, in that heavy goodbye scene, that he’d probably do the same. Maybe. And he said he would ignore the fact that he’s responsible for everything good that’s happened to her. There’s an argument I don’t buy, and I’ll use Jay-Z to explain myself. In “Lost One”, a track off of 2006’s Kingdom Come, the HOVA opens with this:

“It’s not a diss song, it’s just a real song / Feel me? // I heard motherfuckers saying they made Hov / Made Hov say, “Okay so, make another Hov”

The HOVA explains it the lyric this way:

“I owe a lot of my success to a lot of people, but ultimately, no one made me. This is the kind of lie that people get told all the time, sometimes in romantic relationships, sometimes in their professional lives: that somehow who they are is a result of other people’s investment in them. It’s vital to resist that or you risk losing yourself; as I say in another song, Remind yourself / nobody built like you / you design yourself.”

It is without question that Don changed Peggy’s life (hiding her big Pete baby secret not withstanding) but they are different people, different sexes, on different tracks and she’s been a victim of bad timing with him one time too many. Why is it Peggy who always walks in to his office when he’s in the worst possible mood for a totally unrelated reason? Ugh.

Just as Jay says, Peggy is now reminding herself that she designs herself. And that look of excitement and relief as she prepared to step in the elevator was uplifting for me, because she’s been in a rut all season.

So it seems like Don’s losing grasp on all the women who matter to him most. Megan isn’t going to be controlled like a 1966 Jag. “She just comes and goes as she pleases,” Ginsberg observed about her, or no one in particular. And the out-of-chronology reveal of Don’s too-late plea to stop Joan broke my heart. I started tearing up at that scene, but by the time he was bidding adieu to Peggy, the tears were full-on running down my face.

So I’ve left a lot unsaid here. Mainly about Joan. But I want you men to weigh in first. Over to you, boys.

You’ll like it when you’re in it,

Elise

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May 20, 2012

5.10: Hare Hare, Hare Krishna

Ugh, this is the 10th episode of the season already? I can’t believe we have so few episodes left. But these seasons tend to work like Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit — build, build, build, climax somewhere in the third act (or the penultimate episode), bring on the resolution in the very end (or the season finale.)

Lane Skimmin’

How many storylines do I say “This isn’t going to end well” about? But this really isn’t going to end well. But, this season’s theme is “every man for himself,” right? His pride keeps him from going to the partners honestly and saying he’s in a tough spot and needs some cash. (Clearly Roger has enough to buy off his copy writers as needed and to give his ex wife a new apartment.) Borrowing $50,000 on behalf of the firm, money that is GOING TO HAVE TO BE PAID BACK … and then paying himself with a fraudulent check … this has future-JP Morgan/Chase written all over it. Doesn’t Future Lane ever meet present-day Jamie Dimon in the Negron Complex?

Joan and Don

Their mutual respect and rapport was obvious in the hospital after Guy got his foot chopped off with a lawnmower in Episode 3.6. They truly seemed to understand each other at this point in their lives. Joan is asking herself where she’s going, because she feels she has nothing. Don is asking himself where he is going, because he has everything.

Critics and fans have said Don and Joan are meant to be together, but maybe because they are, they’ll never be together. Such are the rules of television, right?

The bar scene reminded me a bit of Don’s bar scene with Peggy in one of the best episodes of Mad Men ever, Season Four’s “Suitcase” (4.7):

“Don shares with Peggy that he watched his father get killed by a horse when he was only 11; Peggy (in keeping with the reflexivity of their characters) reveals she too watched her father die in front of her when she was also a child. They both avoid what’s in their suitcases by giving everything they have to their work. I wonder, in fact, whether their personality types are somehow well-suited for advertising because of the way their brains can imagine another reality… or something… ?”

But Don and Peggy are soul mates in that they are mirrors of one another. It’s different than he and Joan, who complement one other.

The Return of Paul Kinsey

That was rad. This is the same former Sterling Cooper writer who briefly became a Freedom Rider in order to be part of something, anything. The latest place he’s playing poser is among the Hare Krishnas, which I suppose I’m not that surprised about, now that I think about it. The guy is a fake human being, though so is Harry, but they went on quite different paths. I suppose this is why Harry feels empathetic toward Paul — they are in many ways the same posers, only Harry got lucky.

“What ghost visited you, Ebenezer?” Don then reminds Pete that Pete instructed him to intervene the next time a boxing match was possible. Pete and Lane found some sort of civility. But these financial tricks wind up getting discovered, so we’re probably set up for another Pete-Lane showdown.

Loose Ends

-I’ve ignored Roger in discussing Joan and Don. But his efforts to try and pay for Kevin are noble, and that line after he dropped off flowers — how many times have I left you with a card from another man — was quietly heartbreaking.

-Meanwhile, it seems Don is starting to care about work again, just as Megan cares more about acting, which is a totally different direction. This is a fissure that’s NOT caused by Betty from 50 miles away.

-“It feels like Joan’s breasts are getting bigger and bigger.” -Matty

-What did y’all think? I found the episode to be pretty uneven compared to others … but maybe I’m missing something.

Surprise, there’s an AIRPLANE here to see you,

Elise

11:51pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyLsUtw0
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(Notes: 1)

Filed under: lane pryce Jamie Dimon Jefferson Airplane Don Draper Joan Holloway

May 6, 2012

5.8: Just Taste It, or, Pizza House!

I realize this was a serious episode exploring identity, fidelity and what makes us alive or dead inside but it was also one of the funniest episodes of Mad Men all season. It’s actually surprising it was so funny, considering how little Roger “One Liner” Sterling appeared in the episode. Between Peggy’s avoidance of Don by yelling “Pizza House” when she answered the phone, to Stan’s reaction to Megan’s resignation, to crazy Michael … there was so much that cracked me up.

But let’s focus here, and start unpacking some of the many layers in this episode. “I don’t even think he would care if I were alive or dead,” Howard’s wife Beth, said, of her husband. As the episode’s title, “Lady Lazarus,” tells us, it’s an episode about rebirth: Pete’s trying to find new life in a new love, Megan wants to be reborn as an actress, (which must be what her father hinted at as her true passion in last week’s episode,) and both Don and Peggy die a little when their hopes for Megan’s career in advertising disappear faster than they could say “just taste it.” Or was it, “just try it”?

On Pete and Beth

Because Pete Campbell’s character is so creepy and generally unattractive, I haven’t see him have “chemistry” with a woman since Peggy. But something resonated between he and Howard’s wife. And he is usually so flippant about his extramarital affairs … this one obviously got to him, too. A sucker for unrequited relationships, I am, because that little window heart just killed me at the end.

Megan’s True Love

“It will never be for me what it is for you,” -Megan to Don, about advertising as work

“Did you know he met Betty Draper doing a print ad? Did you know she was a model? That’s the kind of girl Don marries,” -Joan

On the surface, it’s easy for Joan to compare Megan to Betty as showgirl types that Don marries, but the paths those women have traveled with Don and on their own couldn’t be farther apart. Don is “everything [Megan] hoped he’d be,” but is Megan everything Don hoped she would be? The way this episode ended leaves that up in the air.

Don’s kind reaction to her quitting advertising was sweet, but also repressed. I did appreciate how he sincerely wanted Megan to follow her heart, representing quite a change from how he regarded Betty when she tried to return to modeling in Season One, Episode 9. At the end of that episode, “Shoot,” Don tells Betty he really just wants her at home, being a mother.

Don has never had that particular housewife expectation for Megan, but it was clear after she saved the Heinz account that it is a huge turn on for Don that his wife was so great at his chosen profession. In my personal life, my husband often tells me he wouldn’t love me the same if I weren’t a journalist, like him. He says it’s because journalism is such a part of one’s identity that I’d be a different person if I weren’t one. Don is a man without an identity except for the one he built for himself around advertising. He’s also uniquely matched for a business that involves selling feelings or desires that may not really be there, because that’s how he’s existed as a human being.

So it’s only natural that he died a little inside when Megan admitted she didn’t identify with Don’s professional identity. But letting her go chase her acting dream either represents the changing times (Betty’s failed return to modeling was 1960, now we’re in 1966) or a changing Don, who really does love Megan in a way he never cared for Betty.

Don and Peggy

“I cannot lie to him,” Peggy said to Megan. Peggy is on Don’s side here. She has always been the female version of Don, and Megan makes the mistake in the first half of this episode of confiding in Peggy as if she’s a girlfriend, when really, Peggy reacts as Don would, if he weren’t playing the role of loving husband. (Love that fight in the kitchen at the end.)

Loose Ends

HOLY CRAP Mr. Belding has gained a gazillion pounds and is starring as a Cool Whip maker. I was just waiting for Miss Bliss (from the lost junior high episodes of Saved by The Bell) to show up as Megan’s grisled acting coach.

It’s very strange for me to see someone from the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as a tortured sixties wife. Alexis Bledel has obviously grown old enough for a role like this, and she played it quite well … but I still see her as a teenager.

It’s a non-dairy whipped topping, okay? Just taste it.

To exploding skis,

11:46pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyL1EEYd
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(Notes: 2)

Filed under: Mr. Belding Don Draper megan calvet draper Peggy Olson

April 24, 2012

5.6: The End or the Beginning for Don and Megan?

One question that I’ve been chewing on is whether Don and Megan’s epic chase and fight signaled the end of our protagonist’s “love leave” or the beginning of what’s a more true relationship between Don and his young wife. I begin with an excerpt from my colleague Linda Holmes’ recent post:

There was a surprising amount of “This marriage works very well, because they really get each other” analysis going around after “Zou Bisou Bisou” and the later quasi-violent sex scene in the season premiere, and it was a relief to see the show deal with the fact that this marriage is, in fact, ridiculous, and it is based on the same fundamental lack of respect that marks Don’s other relationships with women.

She goes on to lay out the argument that while the season premiere’s cat-and-mouse “fight” really resulted in some hot sex, this apartment chase displayed real fear on Megan’s part — she was actually scared of her husband in a way that “diminishes this whole thing.”

What I saw in that fight wasn’t the chase or Megan’s fear so much as Don’s fear that she would leave him. The way he clung to her at the end like a little boy against his mother. The way that was blocked, with Don on his knees and his face in Megan’s stomach, made it evoke even more strongly that boy/mom image. The honeymoon may be over — she expresses that she doesn’t “like everything” after all — but the overnight scare forced Don to realize how much he really NEEDS this wife, this woman.

It was just two episodes ago when I said I worry Don has a propensity to domestic violence even though the majority of you (and the pro reviewers) saw Don’s strangling-to-death of the former lover as the effort to symbolically crush his libido and primal desires to stray. I think it’s both — Don could hurt a woman because of his insecurities and his constant need for control (which makes me scared for this marriage), but he’s also constantly trying to punish himself. Remember what he needed from the prostitute last season? He wanted to be slapped again and again while having sex. So maybe there’s hope for him and Megan because she makes him at least sometimes WANT to change and be a better man.

On the flip side, one message made clear by this show is that people don’t change, and that bad mothers wreck a man’s life for the long run. If that’s the case, this marriage is headed to disaster faster than we can say orange sherbert.

Don and Megan… did this episode represent a step toward real intimacy and communication in their marriage, or was it the beginning of the end?

The truth is relative,

Elise

11:18pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyKHDEge
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(Notes: 2)

Filed under: Don Draper don draper a bully don draper self loathing Don and Megan Don Draper and women

April 15, 2012

5.5: Boys on the Slide

Ever the thoughtful writer, Ken Cosgrove’s short story voiceover that ends this episode concludes with a line like “all the beauty was too difficult to bear,” a theme that describes both the subterranean crises that brought on the social unrest of the sixties and the suffering of Pete Campbell.

It’s true that everyone in the office and the audience has been waiting for someone to punch out the glib, preening Pete, the one whose family is some major botanical garden benefactor but has never been rich in spirit or in many cases, decency. But because of the layered way he’s been written, I’ve come around on Pete over the years, especially in episodes like these, when it’s clear he’s always been treading water and now finds himself drowning under the weight of his perfect life.

That’s the thing about water that makes it such a great motif; it’s a force both placid and powerful. A little dripping faucet can explode with too much pressure, much like our beloved Mad Men characters.

Here, Pete (who despite blue blood bonafides seems to be raised by wolves) again searches for a father figure in Don. And Don not only disapproves when Pete beds the prostitute who guesses correctly (on the third try) that his turn on is to have a servant/underling to his “king,” but Don also doesn’t come in and stop Lane from beating the crap out of him. Again and again in the show we’ve seen instances in which Pete looks to Don for fatherly advice. Remember how Pete sought out Don after his real dad’s death in the American Airlines plane crash that starts Season Two? Don shuns him and he goes right to Duck Phillips, who he then pimps out his father’s death to to get an account. Now, after being humiliated in the workplace where he shined, the young account man feels he has nothing.

It’s mayhem on Mad Men, indeed. Between those car wreck scenes we’re shown in Pete’s driving class, and the news of Charles Whitman’s cold-blooded rampage from the University of Texas tower, and fashion changing from suits to madras sport coats, the teenager was right: “Things seem so random all of a sudden, and time feels like it’s speeding up.”

Loose Ends

Megan’s power over Don is ever evident. Megan has the power to stand up to Don about going to dinner parties, and to make Don change into a ridiculous madras sport coat. I guess they all had sport coats on cause it’s “the country.”

While Roger knows he’s a “professor emeritus” at the firm, his unsolicited advice session with Lane showed the silver fox actually DOES KNOW SOMETHING about being an account man. That was an excellent “Sterling Method,” ordering a scotch on the rocks but only drinking it until it’s clear while waiting for your client to tell you all his problems…

Speaking of problems, interesting to put a man with mommy issues who had a whore for a mom in a whore house. Thought they could have done more with that.

Stay away from the vanilla extract, ladies,

Elise

11:32pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyJlGDbq
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(Notes: 7)

Filed under: Don Draper pete campbell Mad Men Season 5 lane pryce Lane and Pete fight

April 8, 2012

5.4: Girls I Do Adore

In an episode framed by the news of systematic rape, torture and killing of eight women, the women of Mad Men learn to stand up for themselves, even while the very real specter of a different kind of damage — emotional and psychological harm — threatens them all. I’m proud we’re watching the women of the show learn to ask for what they want. But the consequences will last a long time.

Just as one of the characters commented that the lone survivor of the 1966 Richard Speck killings “probably won’t be able to speak,” what will happen the precocious Sally — a child who’s always desperately wanted to be an adult — actually faces the realities of a grown-up world? Grandma Pauline seems to be rushing her into that super creepy reality way too fast.

There was already some internet suspicion that because the young Miss Draper is so averse to becoming like her mother that she may be in the beginnings of an eating disorder. If that’s the case, Grandma Pauline forcing her to eat that nasty sandwich didn’t make things any better. But as if that wasn’t bad enough, her creepy discussion of rape, followed by feeding Sally a prescription drug, is sure to lay the groundwork for some demons that may not ever be exorcised. Good God, Grandma.

Speaking of Demons

Before the morning-after moment to confirm Don was in a fever dream (which we should have expected from a former writer for The Sopranos), I actually considered what it would be like to have a season in which Don Draper was on the run from the law. I keep reading the actors say Don’s going to “go in a really different direction” this year, so I guess anything’s possible. So assuming he didn’t actually choke a seductress/former lover to death, we ought to consider Don’s capacity for violence with women, what that says about what he thinks of them, and whether that is dangerous for the women close to him in his life.

Down With The Rapists!

And I’m not talking about Richard Speck. It was the ultimate HELL YES moment when I watched Joan kick out Greg. “I’m glad the army makes you feel like a man … You’re not a good man, and you know it. Even before we were married and you know what I’m talking about.” I think I could hear the collective cheers of America when that happened. But these actions, like everything else, have consequences…

Dawn and Peggy Stick Together

“I was the only one like me for a long time,” Peggy said to Dawn. Peggy has to be a woman in a man’s world. But Dawn has to be a black woman in a white man’s world. That scene in which Peggy asks Dawn whether she wants to be a copywriter, and Dawn doesn’t even imagine a job like that as something that’s possible for her, was heartbreaking.

Peggy extorts Roger: Dazzle Me

Peggy’s now in a position of power. “Why are you doing this to me?” Roger asks, after having to give up $400 because he failed to assign a campaign to any of the writers. “Because you are being very demanding for someone who has no other choice.” BAM! Go Peggy!

Back to Sally Real Quick

In a recent character study of Sally Draper, Slate writes: “While so many other characters have mysterious or unknown pasts, Sally is someone we’ve gotten to watch from her own personal beginnings.” That’s likely why Matt Weiner has said that Mad Men is really a show about Sally. He has admitted that he “is” Sally, a child who grew up in those tumultuous times, affected by the ch-ch-ch-changes. I can only expect things to get weirder and harder for Miss Draper.

Loose Ends:

The bugles reappear. So does a huge knife.

Can I say again I’m scared of Grandma Pauline?

And how about that Michael Ginsburg? I really am going to love that guy. And if his Cinderella story “being dark” wasn’t a too-on-the-nose-metaphor for the whole episode, I don’t know what was.

Times are tough and uh, you can’t get anywhere,

Elise

11:28pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyJLLjLT
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(Notes: 1)

Filed under: Sally Draper Don Draper Don Draper and women Mad Men Season 5 Grandma Pauline Bugles

September 12, 2010

4.8: Power of the Poontang

It’s quite a predicament for women at SCDP - and women in the workplace everywhere, isn’t it? You’re either just a sexy secretary or you’re an overzealous climber bitch. (Monica vs. Hillary, anyone?) As Joey the freelance art director becomes more and more misogynistic toward Joan, (because apparently his mother was the same way), Peggy steps into to save the day and show Joey the door.

Peggy thinks she’s done something magnanimous for Joan. But Joan knows better. Now Joan’s the damsel in distress, saved by a “humorless” chick with a dick. While we’re forty years forward and situations have gotten better for women, I can’t say I don’t understand the perception predicament Joan describes in the elevator.

And this episode really explored the show’s ladies, didn’t it? Bethany’s back, and willing to meet Don’s, uh, draper. She needs a more from him, and says it. “We really are from different generations,” Don replies. But now that we’re hearing his internal thoughts for the first time, a la Carrie Bradshaw, we know he doesn’t think much more of her than he did Betty Draper. She’s beautiful, charming, but not on his level.

The women on his level were traditionally Don’s mistresses - they tend to be the aggressive, modern, independent ladies who could take him or leave him. Midge, the hippie from season one, Rachel Menken, who headed her own stores, Bobby Barrett, who was responsible for the entire Jimmy Barrett machine, Miss Farrell, the enlightened teacher who worried how DON was doing after he ditched her in the car … and now, Faye. The ad doctor of persuasion is actually getting to hear Don’s actual thoughts and worries - he discusses Gene’s upcoming 2nd birthday with her, that he’s out of sorts, etc. etc. Where he keeps the dancer at arm’s length (and later muses that he already “knows her” - is that a reference to how similar she is to Betty?), he seems to let down the mask when he’s with Faye. What a contrast.

Speaking of contrast, I’m not sure how I feel about actually hearing Don’s internal monologue. The show opened with narration and immediately I thought of Sex and the City and wondered if we’d get a “I couldn’t help but wonder” moment. I’ve long believed the beauty of this show is the subtlety in the story and the acting WITHOUT getting into the characters’ heads and actually hearing what they think. While it’s helpful to know Don is now making a bucket list (yay Mount Kilimanjaro) and wants to “gain a modicum of control over” the way he feels, we could have figured that out without the exposition. (Okay, maybe not the mountain climbing part.)

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

-Henry Francis, God bless him. He looked like such a sad, lonely creature mowing that lawn. And he really is stuck with a child. I loved his line “Hate’s a strong word. I hate Nazis.”

-No Roger again!?! Arrrgh.

-Francine’s reminder to Betty is an important one. Who is Betty but a woman who has defined her life through men? And then she acts out with the men she’s with? I can’t decide if it’s bad acting or bad writing that’s making this woman so one-dimensional and irritating. Shouldn’t I feel bad for her a little - I swear I have before in earlier seasons.

Anyway, I’m anxious to hear what y’all think about the new use of narration and the issues about sexism that came up for the girls. And whatever else.

Use kindness and gentleness where force fails,

Elise

September 6, 2010

4.7: On toughness

“So, Bert has no testicles?”

Friends, it is with a heavy heart I write this post knowing we’re now more than halfway through the season. These episodes keep building on each other so well; I expect we’ll be watching episodes 11 and 12 with our mouths agape.

Episode 7, aptly titled “Suitcase,” returns our main characters to the suitcase motif from the end of season two. (Remember the end of that season, when Don left his bags at the California hotel to go off with the Eurotrash, and his suitcase wound up on Betty’s doorstep?)

And what a fitting motif it is. As the SCDP team comes up with ways to describe a Samsonite’s toughness, we find the principals - Don and Peggy - struggling to keep their emotional baggage inside. It’s a test of toughness not only for their clients product, but for these way-too-similar characters, whose mental suitcases are constantly being tossed off the Empire state building.

“You’re not going to start giving me morality lessons, are you?”

Most of this episode was devoid of anyone but Don and Peggy, and the exploration of their relationship together was a huge payoff to viewers, if you ask me. We never really knew what Don knew about Peggy’s baby situation (clearly he still doesn’t know the father), or that her family thought Don was at fault, or that Don was the only person to visit, and how Peggy feels about dealing with it. Don shares with Peggy that he watched his father get killed by a horse when he was only 11; Peggy (in keeping with the reflexivity of their characters) reveals she too watched her father die in front of her when she was also a child. They both avoid what’s in their suitcases by giving everything they have to their work. I wonder, in fact, whether their personality types are somehow well-suited for advertising because of the way their brains can imagine another reality… or something… ? Anyway, Peggy said a lot come morning, when Don found out for certain that his beloved Anna died. “She was the only one who really knew me,” Don said, of Anna. “That’s not true,” Peggy replied. She may not know Dick Whitman, but she knows Don as well as anyone can.

Speaking of reflexivity, that Don versus Duck drunken wrestling scene was about as far away from that Cassius Clay boxing match as we could have gotten, I reckon.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

-Good riddens, Mark. You were a loser. And Peggy’s right, who invites a girl’s family (that she hates) to her romantic birthday dinner?

-Loved that random pink paper crown the boys probably made for Peggy for her birthday. It seems like they have a nice motley crew going, even with that annoying Danny kid around.

-Really not missing Betty. This season is so much better with her absence.

Re: Tim’s question. I think the answer is, Duck wouldn’t bother to wipe his ass. Matt and I loved the Duck wanting to take a shit in their office scene so much that we kept rewinding the DVR to the moment he squats down and lets out a little fart. Did y’all notice that?

Ida was a hellcat,

Elise

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Filed under: peggy olson, don and peggy, don Don Draper don don draper self loathing mad men Mad Men mad men mad men season 4

September 6, 2010

4.7: 5 things that are not fight-related

1. I loved the interaction between Don and Peggy. Don saved Peggy and Peggy is saving Don (again). But I wonder if Don ever would have opened up to Peggy in the first place if he hadn’t saved her to begin with. He knows he can trust her, but would that be the case if she never got pregnant?

2. Roger said that he didn’t like hanging out with the AA guys because they start out telling funny stories and then end up crying. Don’s night in a nutshell.

3. There’s a famous commercial from the 70s (I think) with a gorilla in a cage throwing around and jumping on a suitcase. The company? American Tourister — the rival brand mentioned in the episode. Fun fact: The same company that owns Samsonite bought American Tourister in the 90s.

4. I know we all think Don is a dick, but he is 100 percent right about Peggy’s credit re: Glo-Coat. She works for him. That is how these things go.

5. When Duck was going to take a shit on the Roger’s chair (thinking it was Don’s), how did he plan to wipe his ass? Just a logistical question.

-Tim

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Filed under: glo-coat, don draper peggy olson alcoholics anonymous duck phillips pregnancy

August 30, 2010

4.6: The Lost Weekend

I think I’m going to save the recapping to the others and focus instead on the idea lingering with me since the episode’s end. Did Roger Sterling ever really hire Don Draper?

We explore in this episode the continuation of Don’s total free fall. His drunkenness is now all out in the open, and seriously affecting his work and personal life. When we saw that glimpse of known-drunk Duck Phillips at the awards ceremony, I thought, it won’t be long before Don lets his dog out into the Madison Avenue. (I’m still so sad about poor Chauncey.)

The parallel narrative throughout the episode is the story of how Roger met Don and how Don worked his way into a job at the old Sterling Coo. At the end, it appears Sterling has hired young Draper, but Sterling doesn’t remember it, possibly because he was in a drunken stupor, but - dare I say - was it because Don conned him into it? I know it’s extreme, but Don/Dick’s already created a new identity for himself, it wouldn’t be unthinkable for him to con his way into a job using the boss’ blackouts. No?

Speaking of blackout, the director and writers did a great job of making me feel a bit disoriented as Don was living through his lost weekend. Let me see if I can piece this together correctly. During his binge, Don presents to Life a stolen idea, makes Peggy lock herself into a hotel room with the douchey art director, beds a pretty brunette but then gets rid of her and beds a waitress named Doris, starts going as Dick instead of Don, somehow sleeps until Sunday (thereby forgetting his kids) and then comes to with no knowledge that any of it had happened.

Note, of course, it was Peggy who showed up at his door to snap him out of his stupor. The reflexivity between their two characters continues. It was Don who rescued Peggy from her post-Pete’s-baby stupor, and Peggy who rescued Don from jail after he drunkenly crashed his car while going away with Bobbie Barrett.

Ultimately, Don ends up hiring someone he doesn’t want to because of a drunken mistake. Is that what Roger did too? Did Don just TELL Roger he hired him, since Don’s exactly cunning enough to know that Roger goes from “lubricated to morose” enough to make a drunken hire believable? Don’s whole personal and professional genius is selling a different version of reality, isn’t it? Looking forward to your responses.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

-We finally find out just how far back Joan and Roger’s relationship goes. That couple was together for years! I loved Joan’s late fifties ‘do.

-While we were watching this episode, over on NBC the show was winning more Emmys, including best drama on TV. Word.

-Bravo, Peggy. Not only was the award-winning Glo Coat idea actually yours, you made Don clean up the “cure for the common cereal” mess honorably AND your naked take down of the chauvinist art director made me feel proud for womankind.

-Did y’all notice that John Aniston, father of Jenn Aniston and “Victor Kiriakis” on Days of our Lives, was the awards emcee? Oh, the good ol’ ‘Days.’

Aspiration’s as good as perspiration,

Elise

12:45am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyziLhi
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