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
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Filed under: anti-tobacco, SCDP, Mad Men sally Sally Draper betty Betty Draper 
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
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Filed under: season 4, feminism mad Mad Men Ida Blankenship Vietnam Sally Sally Draper