April 22, 2012
5.6: In the Sky with Diamonds

“Where are we? Where are we going?” -Sally Draper

I travel a good amount; nothing like those who practically live at 30,000 feet, but enough to lose a sense of place at least a few times a month, and it’s invigorating and disorienting at once. If you ask me, there’s no place quite more like purgatory than an airport. A bunch of strangers waiting to go somewhere, reliant on greater powers to get them there (or in many cases, canceling or delaying their journeys). 

This episode felt like that, and since it’s Mad Men, I’m sure it was intentional. The bouncing from narrative to narrative, displacing time and linear storytelling, taking the characters out of the office … I’m never sure how I feel about Mad Men “on the road” — the Euro drifting in California was particularly annoying for me — but these trips, both figurative and literal, seemed necessary at this point in the series.

Because as audience members, we’ve been circling the runway, waiting for key Mad Men relationships to land. It didn’t seem like Roger and Jane were going to see the 1970s together, much less take off for a weekend at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge and Restaurant (which Megan aptly pointed out, is actually “on the way to a destination”). And the power tensions brewing between Megan and Don have been obvious from the start. 

So where did we land? Jane and Roger finally admitted their relationship was over; they arrived at a truth somewhere in the middle of an excellent LSD trip. The Megan-Don scare showed us the truth of Don, which is that he is Dick Whitman, a cowardly “whore-child” who drove away from his wife when she reminded him of it. And Bert Cooper, always surprising us with his lucidity when we need him the most, forces Don to confront the truth that’s been driving viewers crazy: he doesn’t care about work anymore, and that’s been the heart of his fake identity/life for the entirety of this show.

What must it feel like to live “in between”? Don’s in between the man he is and the man he created. His feelings for Megan, the love drunkness, has led the two identities to meld in a way that’s troubling for him. Peggy, as it was clear when she tried to stand up to Heinz in the boardroom, is a woman in a job men are expected to do. It’s a social/professional purgatory that muddies her personal life. And perhaps most interestingly, there’s the new character, Michael Ginsburg, who’s stuck in between truth and reality in the most painful way — he doesn’t know his truth, because being born in a concentration camp seems too incredulous to believe. Maybe he really is a martian.

Loose Ends

Will Mad Men bring back the hand job?

I don’t know about you but I thought that orange sherbert looked disgusting, and would have really liked a piece of pie.

“It’s a myth that tracing logic all the way down the truth is the cure for neuroses or anything else.” Gotta love a good dinner party full of intellectuals or faux-intellectuals who then share their LSD.

As usual I’m sure I missed all the good stuff. Can’t wait to hear what y’all think.

Only from a dream can you wake to the light,

Elise

11:42pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyK9AQ6Z
(View comments) 
(Notes: 5)
  
Filed under: LSD Megan Draper Mad Men Mad Men Season 5 Far Away Places hand job purgatory airports dick whitman 
March 27, 2012
"I always find it comes down to the two questions I have in my life, which are: Is this it? And, what’s wrong with me?"

— Mad Men creator Matt Weiner, on the essence of the show

12:37pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyIer7iD
(View comments) 
(Notes: 5)
  
Filed under: Matthew Weiner Mad Men 
March 25, 2012
5.1 and 5.2: For Every Season, Beans Beans Beans

We’ve waited 17 months for this comeback; on the show, only mere months have passed. (Season 4 took place between November 1964 and October 1965.) Instead of jumping two years in time, as we saw between Seasons 1 (1960) and 2 (1962), Mad Men head honcho Matthew Weiner starts us in June 1966, right in the middle of the fast, changin’ times. 

Unlike Phillip, I deliberately decided not to go back and binge on Mad Men seasons 1 through 4, or read any press about the premiere, mainly because I wanted to see how well the storytellers in charge of this show would put me back into the experience and I was curious as to what feelings or memories from 17 months ago lingered and which ones didn’t. Some thoughts:

There’s a country song popular in the late 1990s that went, ”I’m so happy that I … can’t stop cryin.” This is exactly what I started singing at the end of this episode. Joan makes motherhood seem about as appealing as an all-expenses paid trip to Sudan. Pete’s headed down the Don path (quite literally — he’s now taking the train home to suburbia), Roger’s obviously in the no-client-sunset of his career and Don’s “happiness” only makes me anxious. 

In hour two, that white carpet served as a maybe-too-on-the-nose metaphor for Don and Megan’s life together. Don wanted it for facile reasons and it was great when it was a white carpet. But it quickly got dirtied and needed replacing. Will Megan? But I am in an argument with myself about this one. There are signs of hope for their relationship — she’s obviously “up” for things in a way Betty wasn’t (Betty didn’t like it so rough), and Don has clearly shared his Dick Whitmanness with Megan and she really does “know” him in a way his first wife did not. 

More on the Zou Bisou: It really is glaring how different Don is now that he’s found a girl who he sees as his “whore” rather than as a “mother.” In previous seasons, Don’s Madonna/whore complex (complicated by the fact his birth mother was an actual prostitute) was played out through his wife Betty and his string of ladies-on-the-side. Betty’s sexuality was never something Don was persuaded by. When she wanted to return to modeling, he talked her into staying in her role as a housewife. When she donned the sexy black getup for their anniversary, he couldn’t perform. And when she wore that sexy yellow bikini in Season 2’s “Maidenform,” he verbally dressed her down, calling her “desperate” and humiliating her. But in the same season, Don was enjoying a masochistic relationship with Bobbi Barrett. 

So tonight, to have Megan writhe in front of him before a crowd of his coworkers, and Don ultimately responding favorably with a tumble in the carpet debris… is this a changed man, indeed? Has he found a wife who he doesn’t see as a mother? I’m really interested in this relationship, how it’s changed Don, and what y’all think about what we’ve seen.

On business, Pete said it best: “Stable. It’s that step backward between successful and failing.” Don doesn’t “really care about work” anymore. This is huge, people. What?! He built his entire fake identity/life around this and now he’s coming in late, leaving early, and being “kind … patient” to clients, as Peggy described.

I’m very interested to see what the writers do with the black secretary SCDP has been forced to hire because of their prank. This show has consistently kept the battle for civil rights as C plots or smaller (remember when that poser Paul went on the freedom rides?); but it’s 1966 now. We know civil rights won’t be a subterranean story line much longer.

Loose ends:

Roger: “There’s my baby.” AWWWWKWARD.

While I still think Jane Sterling sucks, it was so so funny when Roger asked her why she doesn’t sing like Megan and she said, “Why don’t you look like [Don]?” ZING!

And … Harry Crane is still an idiot. That was some funny shizz.

Can’t wait to read what y’all thought.

To the Steinway of walking sticks,

Elise

11:48pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyIaRTpM
(View comments) 
Filed under: Mad Men Mad Men season 5 Mad Men season 5 premiere The year 1966 
October 17, 2010
4.12: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

As usual, the season ends way, way too soon for us MadMenaholics. Somehow we’re already nearing the Summer of Love, and this season more than the rest we’ve gotten to see real evolution. SCDP is no Sterling Cooper (though the new company is failing), Peggy’s become a bonafide working gal who can equal Don in creative talent and emotional restraint and coolly hang with the Bohemians on the weekends, the decline of Roger and Bert reflect the passing away of the old ways of doing business, Pete’s gone from slimy office weasel to guy who falls on his sword to keep Don’s secret.

We haven’t gotten to see Don do much in the way of making a great pitch this season. I liked the early season bikini ad, but that ended in a tirade. But that smoking ploy was as creative and fun as his shenanigans to get Teddy Chaough to waste resources making a commercial in their competition to win the Honda account. Too bad it drove Bert Cooper to quit, and it may not help save SCDP in the end, but props to the guy for trying. He was probably right not to check with the others - Don’s a “ask for forgiveness later” type of guy.

But then there’s Betty. Who hasn’t really grown up at all. Her insisting upon keeping her appointments with Sally’s child psychologist was already grating enough; by the time she wrecked her daughter by telling her they would move homes simply because she was jealous of her daughter’s platonic time with creepy Glen? It’s totally in line with her character but I am now going to actively lobby for her to be written off the show. Mad Men’s real strength comes in its office stories anyway; if Betty Draper is going to continue to be so one-dimensional, I don’t see any reason to keep her on much at all. It’s frankly a relief her screentime’s been so reduced this season.

But Sally. What will become of Sally? Walton and I spent a lot of time discussing her offline this season, wondering how much she’ll become like Don, or whether she’s going to become overly sexualized as we head into the sexual revolution, how she’s going to deal with living under her mother’s roof for the rest of her adolescence…

And here we are at the season finale. Came too soon.

Pickles are funny,

Elise

7:13pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDy1FruMo
(View comments) 
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: anti-tobacco, SCDP, Mad Men sally Sally Draper betty Betty Draper 
September 27, 2010
4.10: Hide and Seek

In an episode full of revelations, the main secret driving the the show’s central character gets kept under wraps - for everyone besides Faye, a new member of the Draper/Whitman inner circle. But let’s review everything we learned about the rest of the characters: Lane is involved with a “negro”! Joan is preggers with Roger’s baby! Joan gets a secret abortion! Roger loses 69% of SCDP’s revenue! Lane’s a victim of domestic violence!

This episode worked so well because it played on the central theme of the show: secrets and lies. And now that we’re four seasons in, the audience is getting a huge payoff for paying attention all these years. We see the resentment Pete harbors toward Don, as Pete has known the Dick Whitman secret since 1960 and now it’s coming back to ruin his business relationship. (Only the irony there is Don actually helped fix Pete’s big secret - the Peggy baby situation - all those years ago.) We see the marked difference between Betty’s reaction to learning Don’s secret and Faye’s reaction. Where Betty turned cold toward Don after learning the truth, Faye drew nearer to him. Faye’s actually Don’s type, of course. Instead of being a trophy wife who can cook and sew and such, Faye is that independent, headstrong woman who Don’s always actually been drawn to. (e.g. Rachel Menken, crazy Miss Farrell, Bobbie Barrett, Midge)

So one of my questions as we leave this episode is, if Don gets away with it again and gets to keep his fake identity, isn’t he still running? He really breaks down here and admits he’s sick of running, but Pete helping him keep things under wraps means he’s going to continue this lie… should the whole house of cards come tumbling down in order to save his sanity?

Finally, the change theme of the season’s really coming into full focus, as Roger loses the company’s golden egg (and, I think, the only real account he’s in charge of). As we’ve talked about in previous posts, his and the rest of the “old guard’s” influence is waning, if not dying a la Blankenship and that client he tried to reach by phone in this episode.

So we head an episode closer to the season finale with SCDP teetering on the edge, and Trudy about to pop out a tot. Methinks this season won’t end with as much caper-style fun and triumph as last season.

Watch out for old British dudes with canes,

Elise

10:24pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDy17fu3v
(View comments) 
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: lucky strike betty Betty Draper roger sterling joan harris lane pryce mad men mad men season 4 episode 10 mad men 
September 20, 2010
4.9: Girls, Girls, Girls

While I didn’t love this episode,  the young versus old, male versus female conflicts we’ve been observing all season come into full focus. And as Walton mentioned, the season-long “the education of Peggy Olson” continues…

I was especially struck by what Walton observed in his “wounded knee” post regarding the gradual disappearance of people like Bert and Roger this season. Just last week he wrote:

It is significant that Roger and Cooper have been absent, invisible. They are part of the fading, receding mode. 

And in this episode, good ol’ Ida Blankenship (who we were all getting sick of anyway) ACTUALLY ‘RECEDES’ in death. How prescient of our gimpy co-blogger to basically predict this. And my god, watching the secretaries put the blanket over her in the background of that  meeting - what a great use of the glass conference room.

But this episode was really about the girls. Photographer Joyce describes at the end of the episode the idea of a woman being a container for a man. But finally,  now that we’re in 1965 and in the midst of great social change, women get a chance to turn their backs on being someone else’s container. But with great difficulty or sacrifice. Faye can’t deal with children well because she chose work over family (signaling that she believes it’s a linear choice); Peggy compares her professional struggle with the plight of blacks, and she’s not wrong.

Ever the traditionalists, Ida spent her life answering phones for other people and dies in that position. Joan was the “container” to Roger’s “vegetable soup,” holding him and warming him all these years, but what did she get out of it in her real life? He married another secretary while she got stuck with an absent failure of a doctor who will  probably die in Southeast Asia.

Sally’s story is sadder than ever; her situation has basically set her up to be someone who either hates men or seeking the attention of men for the rest of her life. Sure is tough being a girl.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

-Besides that rum-topped french toast, Don didn’t have a drink all episode, did he?

-Is anyone actually going to publish Roger’s book?

-Let’s say the mugging didn’t happen. Would Joan have hooked up with Roger? I wish we knew how their affair ended. It seemed she basically let Jane have him, but would he have left  his wife for Joan as he did Jane? I realize I’ve fallen into a  hypothetical abyss here…

To devoted caretakers everywhere,

Elise

12:16am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDy14ocRM
(View comments) 
(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: season 4, feminism mad Mad Men Ida Blankenship Vietnam Sally Sally Draper 
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

11:25am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDy107sm1
(View comments) 
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 
August 22, 2010
4.5: I’m So Ashamed

“A man is shamed by being openly ridiculed and rejected. It requires an audience.” -Don, quoting The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

I’m fascinated by the way this episode dealt with the concept of shame. Sally does something considered shameful, Don’s ashamed of Sally cutting her hair, Betty’s ashamed of her daughter masturbating, both parents are ashamed they have to take their daughter to the shrink, Don shames the Japanese into the future Honda account…

That Honda car account’s going to be huge though.

Tim also brought up another important theme - rivalry. Us versus them (the US versus the Japanese), SCDP versus the other ad agency, Sally versus her parents, Pete versus Roger… anything else?

“That woman will tell everyone.” -Betty, about the neighbor who caught Sally “playing with herself”

“I feel like Sally did this to punish me.” -Betty, being the ultimate child

Both Elise and I said out loud, after that line, “Oh of course, it’s all about you.” We could have jinxed each other. Sure, Don is an asshole, but Betty’s worse than Dina Lohan.

—Matt

11:59pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyxOdyp
(View comments) 
(Notes: 4)
  
Filed under: shame japanese mad men mad men season 4 
August 22, 2010
Recognize Ted?



Actor Kevin Rahm, playing the rival Creative Director (I love rivals), was in one of my favorite commercials of all time. 

—Tim

11:39pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyxOI07
(View comments) 
Filed under: volkswagen commercial mad men 
August 15, 2010
4.4: Swellegant

Pete CampbellI’m so going to start using “swellegant” now.

Anyway. What a fine episode. I found it to be just a breath of fresh air after last week’s contrived first half in California. This one injected so much more humor into dark situations:

  • Peggy peeking over the high window to get a look a Don, which aptly mirrored the focus group through-the-looking-glass situation
  • “You son of a bitch.” (After Pete again resorts to arm-twisting family members in order to get ahead at work.)
  • Peggy’s banging her head on the table (I can so relate)
  • Allison’s spectacularly dramatic globe-throwing
  • The return of Bert Cooper’s old hag, Mrs. Blankenship
  • The shot of Bert Cooper sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper or magazine
  • The bear head! FTW!

Funny moments aside, I thought this episode stood out thanks to solid pacing and character development (or in Don’s case, non-development) vis-a-vis their situations. Peggy gets introduced more deeply to the counterculture (“Did you know Malcolm X was SHOT last weekend?”) and it will be interesting to see how the pull of these “genuine” writers and artists affect her as she continues to work in an old-boys club; that final scene as she runs off with her new hip pals and the men-in-suits are all standing in the lobby really said it all.

And speaking of that moment, the baggage between Peggy and Pete clearly weighs Peggy down, despite Don’s mantra, as he presented to Peggy in the hospital after she delivered Pete’s child: “”It will shock you how much it never happened.” We still don’t know exactly what it was like for those two after Peggy revealed to Pete that she had his bastard baby and that she “could have shamed” him into being with her. But I’m doubting the two are going to hash out their feelings over a long lunch anytime soon.

Allison. Such a sad casualty of Don’s downward spiral. It was interesting she assumed Peggy went through the same experience, but it only highlighted how low Don’s stooped; he used to regard the secretary pool as off limits. (Remember the cold war  Roger courting and marrying former secretary Jane?)

Part of Don’s outburst at Dr. Faye also hit on a common theme: “You can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved.” OR CAN YOU?  Do people have the capacity to change? (You’ll remember this was major theme of The Sopranos, also written by Matthew Weiner.) Faye advises that the Pond’s Cold Cream campaign play on young women’s desires to get married. Don thinks that’s too old-fashioned. Don is essentially arguing that new ideas, presented well, can change behavior. But Don, Peggy, Pete (especially in this episode) show their behavior hasn’t changed much at all since 1960.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say once I expose myself to other observations. But as usual, this is my initial brain dump, free of influence from the professional critics. What did y’all think?

Gotta go. My nightly beauty ritual awaits.

-Elise

11:55pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDyvGygu
(View comments) 
Filed under: change Don Draper peggy olson pete campbell baby allison the secretary mad men mad men season 4 capacity to change counterculture in the 1960s advert advertising