Conversations About Mad Men

June 10, 2012

5.13: Temporary Bandage on a Permanent Wound

“Not every girl can do what she wants.” -Megan Calvet’s Mother

In the finale to a melancholy season five, showrunner Matthew Weiner writes and directs an episode in which business is doing better than ever, but that’s about the only thing looking up.

The times change, but do people ever change? Weiner was a head writer on The Sopranos, the sweeping mob drama whose primary premise was that we never do change. And in this season finale’s final set piece, which puts Don Draper back into the Chinese-themed bar of the pilot episode, Don’s on the precipice of proving that despite his yearlong stint as a happily married, successful man, he’s ultimately a self-loathing skirt-chaser that can’t be reformed.

He gives Megan what she wants, even though Don’s principled stand about how she should be discovered by someone rather than get a job because she’s someone powerful’s wife was correct. Here, he had a chance to wind up with a woman who waited for him to come home, just as Megan’s mother told him. But instead, he demonstrated how much he really does care for his wife’s happiness (in a way he did not care about Betty’s) by helping her realize her dream … of being a commercial actress? Methinks that’s not really her dream, just as Don pointed out. But she did seem happy.

“I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. We just happen to have the same problem.” Perhaps the only way we can divorce ourselves from the past, the episode surmises, is by erasing our brains. But as other art (read: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and this episode’s own example (Beth has been shocked before) show us, the deepest imprints of dissatisfaction, or the opposite, love-filled bliss, can’t be electro-shocked out of us. So Beth will likely become “blue” again, Pete comes to terms with his permanent wound, and Don may forever be haunted by his mistakes — little brother Adam, who killed himself in Season 1, Lane Pryce and the bitter sacrifices he made for SCDP, and the cascading casualties of living a lie for so long. On the flip side, we chase after, perhaps in vain, some sort of ingrained notion of how things should be better and we should be happier than we are.

…Which can drive drug use. Roger’s LSD trip earlier this season was so life-altering that he’s chasing after whatever honesty he encountered before. That shot of naked Roger was about the only thing that made me smile in a finale montage that otherwise felt so blue.

Loose Ends

- Nice shot of the five partners in the empty office space at the end. So well composed and cinematic.

- Good to see Peggy, and to have the two kindred spirits of Peggy and Don run into each other at an afternoon movie, which is perfectly in line with both their characters. I was wondering whether Elisabeth Moss’ exit two episodes ago was a permanent goodbye.

- I wanted to see more of Joan, but I suppose they rounded out her character arc pretty well by making her a partner after she essentially had to whore herself out. And it hurt when she said that she should have done the same for Lane, as if that would have stopped him.

- Looks like Bert Cooper will finally have an office again. Maybe he will purchase another Rothko for it.

To presidents of the Howdy Doody Circus Armies,

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June 10, 2012

NYT: ‘Mad Men’ Creator Matthew Weiner Reflects on the Season So Far

On Sunday afternoon, he spoke to ArtsBeat about everything that’s happened on the series this season prior to the finale. (And he has sworn on a box of Bugles that he’ll call us back on Monday to talk about the finale itself.) These are excerpts from that conversation.

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Filed under: matthew weiner Mad Men Season 5

May 10, 2012

5.8: In Which I Had To Look Up Modernism Versus Post-Modernism

After our resident professor-blogger Walton expounded on Pete Campbell’s reading of Thomas Pynchon and suggested that Pete’s ethos is a hybrid of modern and post-modern, I looked up the differences and found a handy chart.

So, modernism aligns with realism and post-modernism is literature that’s aware it’s literature, or art that’s aware it’s art. You could argue any advertising creative is post-modern, because advertising by the sixties was all about using language and art to control consumer behavior. But our characters, in this decade of great evolution, are in very different places on that spectrum.

Walton, on Peggy’s post-modernism:

When Peggy rages on Don, in Don Draper style, she’s dazzling. She exacts an ability to control the messages around Don. Peggy is able to do what Campbell can’t: power and language control. As she explains to Megan: I cannot lie to him. Peggy may have become a postmodern already. But when Don toes the edge of the abyss, the open elevator shaft, he pulls back, unwilling to plunge.

Phillip, in his recent post, touched on the same themes, maybe without knowing it: How much do we control the messages we send to others, and by extension, how they react?

But I’m not sure I agree with you, Phil, about Pete being backward. From Phil’s post:

Pete is as backward-looking as Peggy is forward-looking. Pete is still trying to find acceptance from some father figure, and has chosen to make himself out to be like Don. Whether it is wanting a bigger office, wanting praise for clients, wanting to sleep with hookers, wanting to cheat on his wife, or just wanting to act lost and desperate, Pete has metamorphosed into Don.

Pete’s always seemed raised by wolves; so uncertain of his identity that he has had to model himself after other people. After Don rejected him in Season 2, Pete clung to Duck Phillips, for example.

But I do think he has been on the right side of history and creative culture even though he doesn’t get much credit for it. In Season 3, Episode 5’s “The Fog,” Pete lobbies for integrated advertising — trying to sell the untapped “negro” market. The client hated it, Sterling joked, “Well, if it isn’t Martin Luther King,” but Pete was looking forward when everyone else in his universe wasn’t.

Similarly, in Season 1, Episode 10, “Long Weekend,” the firm watches Nixon and Kennedy TV ads and the old guard, which obviously backs Nixon, laments “it should never have been this close.” Pete sees what the others don’t: “The president is a product, don’t forget that,” he says. That was 1960, and Pete was arguably post-modern even then.

I point this out to say that while yes, Pete seems to want a life like Don’s, his frustration in not succeeding suggests that he is actually not backward, but ahead of his time. I’m with Walton on this one: “Pete is bridge character: he is both the last modern and the first postmodern character on the show.”

And I’d definitely put Don behind Pete in the race to the future.

Y’all are everything I hoped you’d be,

Elise

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Filed under: modernism post-modernism Pete Campbell Mad Men Season 5

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

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(Notes: 5)

Filed under: LSD Megan Draper Mad Men Mad Men Season 5 Far Away Places hand job purgatory airports dick whitman

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

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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

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(Notes: 1)

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

April 2, 2012

5.3: Weighing In On Betty

First, I have to clear something up with Young Dan, who in his last post chided Weiner for a “current” reference, when really Henry Francis’ character was referring to the elder Romney, Mitt’s dad George. I think Dan is young enough to claim ignorance on the role of George Romney in American politics. Here’s Vanity Fair:

On last night’s episode of Mad Men, Henry Francis, a high-ranking operative for Republican New York mayor John Lindsay and Betty’s mostly supportive, Bugle-blind second husband, took a phone call at his home in which he told his interlocutor, “Romney’s a clown and I don’t want him standing next to him.” Francis was referring to George Romney, Michigan governor (1963–1969) and father of current presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Romney, a Republican with relatively progressive views on civil rights, became something of a political pariah following his public opposition to G.O.P. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater in 1964. That might explain the “clown” comment.

Now, I’ve been thinking more about Betty Draper Francis in light of all the flak she’s taking from critics and other fans on the internet today. Let’s get this out of the way, first:

1.) That fat suit sucks. January Jones MAY have gained some weight after just having a baby before filming began, but THIS (left) is what she looked like just weeks after having that baby. Those fake fat jowls didn’t work in season one, they were painfully distracting in season five.

2.) Betty’s character could be less compelling (even though you could argue Don is just as bad or has been just as bad) because of the limitations of January Jones as an actress. But we’ll just focus on her character and the storyline presented to her.

So… Should we feel bad for Betty, or just wish that she were off the show?

This is a woman who is stunted, spoiled and vain; she’s shortchanged her three children, behaved badly as a wife and seems to see everything in the context of her own narrow worldview. (Note that she went instantly from her cancer scare to not happiness and relief, but just more pouting about being fat.) She’s empirically incapable of thinking about the needs of anyone else. But she’s also trapped by her time, was the unwitting part of a loveless marriage based on a lie, and “nurture” does have something do with the way she turned out.

So now she’s permanently dissatisfied and unhappy. I think the reason I’m bothered by this character and her arc is, where is it going? After watching her over the past six years, she hasn’t “grown” at all, while we’ve watched the other characters face situations in which they’ve been forced to flex or adapt and if not, at least become more sympathetic to the viewer. Betty seems stuck in time to me, and so I question her usefulness or place on this show.

Or am I wrong? Does she serve to say something about the larger questions asked on Mad Men — Is Betty losing weight control a sign of the times, an ushering in of a new feminist idea that women should not be objects? Who are we? How much is how the public perceives us a part of our identity? Should it matter?

To Bugles and ice cream sundaes,

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(Notes: 1)

Filed under: Mad Men Season 5 Betty Draper Francis Mad Men fat suits Betty weight gain george romney

April 1, 2012

5.3: Time’s Not On My Side

When is everything gonna get back to normal?, the atrophying Roger Sterling asks. The wheels of change are spinning forward, and many of the characters aren’t. It’s been a consistent theme on this show, but never as clearly as at this point, now that we’re a year out from the Summer of Love.

We watched as young, striving Pete embarrassed the white-haired, account-less Roger after dangling the Mohawk Airlines account in front of him before snatching it back in a public show. The firm now employs both an African American woman and a young Jew. And the age difference between Don and Harry and the Rolling Stones groupies was so wide that I worried those guys were gonna slip into some statutory rape situation.

Mad Men has never been a show driven by quick plot changes, and this was clearly not one of the show’s stronger episodes, especially since the least-dimensional of the show’s characters, Betty Draper, played such a central role in it.

But it has always been a show about identity. And wearing masks. Betty has always been least interesting to me perhaps she is so transparent as a character. I like that she has a “mask” of her own now, even though this show makes really horrible fat suits. You’d think they’d improve on their “fat” makeup since Peggy’s in season one …

So, who is Betty ~~Draper~~ Francis? What hunger is she feeding there? And what are those new layers covering up? Since I don’t think much of January Jones’ range, I’ll just go with the most obvious explanation, that she’s generally unsatisfied. But she was a spoiled daddy’s girl beauty queen who never fully grew up. Will she ever find satisfaction?

Megan was right that Betty’s cancer scare gave Betty a reason to call. Henry is right to be wary of her relationship and kneejerk need to reach out to Don.

Enough about that. I’ve always enjoyed art that rewards the audience for paying attention … and five seasons into the show, I enjoyed the callbacks to and echoes of season one:

Betty and Don’s familiarity. I liked that moment when she asked him to “say what he always says,” even though recent years in their lives have proven he’s just lying when he says everything’s going to be fine.

Don’s conversation backstage with the young gal reminded me of his relationship with the hippie, Midge. She was ahead of her time, living a boho life with other artists. And Don always looked at her with that same bemused face that he looked at the concert groupie. He also looked just as out of place in 1966 at that concert as he did in those Soho lofts in 1960.

Loose ends:

I’m really excited about this Michael Ginsburg character. This is going to be good. Peggy is never as fun in the office as when she’s sparring with her male coworkers, a la Stan Rizzo and that great working naked scene from last season. And Ginsburg obviously has some family baggage that will be fascinating to learn about.

“Because Romney’s a clown, and I don’t want him standing next to him.” - Henry Francis, on George Romney (Mitt’s father).

Seeds of the sexual revolution are here! “None of you want us to have a good time because you never did.”

What Stiles said during this episode: It’s benign. You’re just fat. I’m so bored.

So, my fellow Mad Men fans, what did you think of episode three? Can’t wait to read your takes.

You know who’s the best? Charlton Heston.

-Elise

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Filed under: Betty Draper Charlton Heston George Romney Mad Men Season 5 Summer of Love Rolling Stones

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!