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
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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 
July 26, 2010
4.1: That Blowup with the Bikini Guys

That blow up with the Jantzen (bikini, er, two-piece) men represented an important transition for Don, and a signal of the time we think about more commonly as ‘the sixties.’

His whole point, in storming out after they insisted his campaign be more “modest” was that customers are going in a certain direction (smaller bikinis), and you should catch the wave - not with a sexy product,  but with a smartly suggestive ad - before losing them based on 50s-era principles.

The whole episode is about the transition from the conservative early-sixties to a more modern time. And Don’s reflecting that, by eventually selling himself to the WSJ, by taking risks with the bikini guys, by realizing that it’s about what the public wants and not what the client wants. (It wasn’t that long ago when Don aligned himself with Nixon over Kennedy, and said, “There to be advertising for people without a sense of humor.” That bikini ad, in contrast, was a 180 from Season 2,  the 1962 Don.) The whole season will be about his evolution and the country’s revolution into a new era. The sexual revolution’s on, yo. This is just the  beginning.

In advertising, the new governing principle seems to be how success is more about the projection of yourself than real human-to-human relationships, which remains pervasive today, half a century later.

This is what television created. In the beginning, Harry Crane was some forgotten guy off in the corner, but TV changed the culture and made him somewhat important. If you were a print advertising guy and you couldnt keep up with the evocative nature of television, you lost. Shots of two wholesome girls in a park or whatever, they didn’t work anymore - don’t work anymore. The new rule for print ads - it has to be smart and good and different and challenge viewers, and Don’s getting that. Or at least he’s getting the confidence to fully express that.

The experience with Conrad Hilton in season three also changed Don. Remember when Sterling Cooper created that great “how do you say hamburger in Japanese” ad, and Hilton was displeased because it didn’t mention the moon? He’s no longer going to let the client get in the way of good work. It’s evolving individualism. There’s less subservience to the good of the institution, the client, etc.  They’re all telling him how important new clients are,  and he goes in there and tells them to fuck off.  It’s more about him and his exertion of his independence and what he believes, and less about his fifties-era reverence for the larger institutions that hire him or employ him.

Or maybe I’m just projecting what I think about media onto Don. Perhaps he’s just still burned by his father figure Hilton rejecting him last season. Your thoughts?

—Matt

9:24pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZQnFDypUxTg
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Filed under: bikini sales, Jantzen don draper advertising sixties independence