As Don would tell Peggy, there's nothing that we do here that you can't live without. But join the conversation if you want to. We love Mad Men. And we love to argue.
This week we got a longer look at our characters home lives — Peggy’s “sinful” cohabitation decision, Megan’s thwarted dreams and dysfunctional parents, Sally peeking through a “dirty” looking glass. Weiner makes our relationships with our parents — their expectations versus our expectations, the way they boost us and the way they let us down — central to this episode, and so for me this episode was classic Mad Men in the way it hewed so closely to a central conceit of the show … the outsized influence our parents have on our lives, for good and ill. And that the patterns we learn at Sally’s age are likely to be repeated again and again.
“Don’t let your love for this man stop you from what you wanted to do,” Megan’s father tells her. I always thought Megan wanted to work in advertising, but I guess she made that declaration while coming onto Don towards the end of the previous season, so I’m really not sure what her true passion is. Dr. Calvet’s view is certainly colored by his celebration of the working class, and the marrying-into-easy-wealth seemed to be among his hangups about his daughter’s situation, but at the heart of that conversation seemed to be true parental desire for his daughter to become fully actualized and liver her best life. Is Don lifting her up or dragging her down?
Megan herself seemed unsure of the answer after using her role as a wife — the gals-in-the-ladies-room reveal — to help save the agency from losing the account. During the next morning’s celebrations, when Peggy was telling Megan “this is the best this job gets,” did Megan have the same exuberance as her colleagues? What is it that would REALLY maker her happy, professionally? It doesn’t seem like it’s advertising, no matter how much it turns on her husband in the backseat of the car…
Speaking of fun times between men and woman, how about that cohabitation! Before cohabitation was accepted! Census numbers from 1960 show fewer than 1000 couples lived together without being married and even that number was overstated. “Using a consistent measure with a consistent source suggests that the increase in cohabitation between 1960 and 2000 was more than 60% greater than previously recognized,” say researchers from the University of Minnesota.
While Peggy seemed disappointed she didn’t get a proposal, her relationship with Joan has evolved enough for her to get a huge boost when Joan called the living-together decision “brave.” I also thought it telling of a stronger bond between to the two ladies when Joan admitted that Greg’s “piece of paper from the US Army” was more important than the marriage certificate he has with her.
And I finally get to Sally. I, like Sally, was eager to start acting like a grown up, be around grownups, and look like a grown up when I was her age. But I cannot imagine walking into a situation like she did … having to stare a fish head in the face AND catch Roger getting a beej? I wish she stayed a kid longer. That girl already had a life full of therapy in front of her; let’s go ahead and tack a few more years of analysis on after the awards night shenanigans.
The things that never change:
- Don’s “studying” how to be a person all the time, as Megan’s father recognized.
- Sally’s problem with the truth continues into this season.
- Sterling’s Gold. I am so glad Roger went on that life-changing LSD trip. He really IS so full of life and ambition again. He’s gotten rid of his anchors, ahem, wives (even though he’s paying for them), and again full of his sharp, Sterling one-liners.
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.
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.
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…
Mad Men’s at its best when the principals are scheming something, like for instance plotting the start of a new rogue agency. So watching Joan, Don, Peggy and Joey team up to set up that fake commercial shoot (cue Peggy riding a Honda around on an empty set) brought me nothing but joy.
But besides that, what a tough episode. It marked the first time we’ve seen Roger get serious since maybe after his season one heart attack. Perhaps I owe this to my recent viewing of Band of Brothers, but I really felt for him and his loyalty to the men that died out there fighting the Japanese. And for him, it’s pretty raw still - just twenty years post WWII.
I’m proud of Pete reminding Roger of the old Godfather axiom that “it’s business [with the Japanese], not personal” and standing up to Roger in an important way. Pete and Betty have long been the adult children on this show, and it seems like Pete’s actually growing up.
Betty, meanwhile, is just as bratty and childish as ever. When she was on the couch with Dr. Edna unknowingly showing off her own ridiculous selfishness, it reminded me of episode 3, when Stephanie, Anna Draper’s niece, said something like “No one knows what’s wrong with themselves and everyone else can see it right away.” Maybe the monthly visits with Dr. Edna will help Betty more than Sally, but a more mentally balanced mother will help Sally in the end anyhow.
Speaking of being on the couch, what a breakthrough for Don, talking to his office shrink/contract employee Faye that way in the kitchen. This whole season/time in the sixties marks the change from not talking about stuff to Don’s bemused observation, “Why do people have to talk about everything?” I was shocked how much he opened up about his situation with the children, how he didn’t know how to deal with them but that he missed them; there’s more there with those two. But I have to admit it’s weird to watch scenes where Don Draper talks about his feelings (when he opened up to Anna about the divorce this season, it was also more than I thought we’d ever hear). I didn’t know if Faye was making an early reference to what we know now as “daddy issues” when she assured him Sally would be okay so long as she knew Don loved her, but she’s probably right that Don’s influence will save Sally in the long run, in spite of her sorry excuse for a mother.
And all the people who figured that engagement ring was just a prop — score!
Stray Observations:
-LOVE ME SOME LAXATIVE PUNS! Roger’s “ease it out” and “sure you don’t need to loosen that up” jokes at the beginning of the episode in reference to the C-COR laxative account killed me.
-More Mad Men/True Blood actor crossover. Dr. Edna played one of the True Blood season two townsfolk who fell under the spell of Marianne and ended up having crazy animal sex with the coroner.
-Where would Mad Men be without Joan? She’s totally the glue that holds everything together.
