TV Reviews

Mad Men s1e12: Nixon Vs. Kennedy

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Ah shit, it’s Election Day 1960! There’s a party in the office where Harry bangs Hildy, Kenny peeps Allison’s undies, and Kinsey’s blowhard yet charming play gets a very dramatic reading. Wonderful.

Don is a man forged from being on the run from his own past, and he’s honestly never stopped. We almost see two distinct people with Don Draper versus Dick Whitman, but the reality is that they are one in the same. He’s an isolated, terrified guy ready to blast out of his escape hatch at the drop of a hat.

“You haven’t thought this through.”

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image courtesy of Hubpages.com

Watching Don put up this tough guy front only to be sincerely threatened by Pete’s “I KNOW U” speech is nuts. As soon as Pete leaves his office, Don’s entire demeanour crumbles and changes.

When you think a glimpse of who this ~mysterious Don~ really is will come through, some sweaty maniac emerges at Rachel’s apartment pleading with her to bounce from Manhattan posthaste. That’s unfortunate. Thankfully Rachel is pragmatic and sees through his rambling nonsense and shuts it down immediately; she calls it like it is, and compares him to a knobhead teenager for jumping at the gun to Run Away Together(TM). She ain’t wrong.

Truth be told, Don’s literally never given a second thought to his actions; the man is compartmentalised to a fault. As soon as she brings up his children it’s plain the idea has simply never dawned on him.

“You haven’t thought this through.”

During the Election Night festivities, someone vommed Creme de Menthe in Peggy’s trash can, and she is not pleased (I wouldn’t be either, Pegs- it’s gauche). To top it off, someone jacked her cash out of her locker during the election day party the night before– rude. Don is already on edge from Pete being in his office uninvited, so after he comes back from Rachel’s rejection to see a weepy Peggy in his personal space the guy is immediately pissed off.

Her complaint to the building sadly ended with a janitor being fired, and she’s upset about disrupting an innocent person’s life. This is a notion that’s literally never fucking occurred to Don Draper. Suddenly, he gets an idea.

Steeled from being shot down by Rachel, Don goes and puffs his chest at Pete, standing over him in the dark.

“I thought about what you said. And then I thought about you, and what a deep lack of character you have.”

I mean, DAMN. He then lets Pete know he’s going to hire Duck Phillips as Head of Account Services, who will be one of the more ludicrous characters in the seasons to come.

So, he calls Pete’s bluff and they go to Bert Cooper’s office together, Pete thinking dropping the bomb about Don’s Dick identity will somehow result in a promotion. Bert Cooper has the most realistic response imaginable, and Pete’s smear campaign is squarely halted.

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DING DING DING

image courtesy of Tumblr

Cooper’s been around the block, and he knows that at the end of the day, this isn’t a massive deal. But don’t think that means he won’t keep this little factoid knocking around in the back of his mind for future gain. After all, one never knows how loyalty is born. How and Why did Don end up at Sterling Cooper, anyway?

Turns out Dick Whitman is a goddamned klutz and literally (accidentally) blows up the real Don Draper in Korea. I love that this story is the most ridiculous thing imaginable, and not some hard boiled noir story of identity change.. after some firing from the enemy and battering down in a ditch, Dick was just scared out of his fucking mind and drops his lighter, which starts a chain explosion. Incredible.

He swaps dogtags with the smouldering hulk of Don corpse out of pure fear-based instinct. As he’s taking the body playing the role of Dick Whitman to his family in PA, he sees his stepmother with Uncle Mac and Adam on the platform. He stiffens for a moment of unadulterated panic as Adam recognises him on the train, but since he’s just a kid, Mac dismisses him pronto.

Some 50’s broad hits on him at that moment, being real insensitive about “that boy in the box” might I add, and he realises that being in some new persona could be of great benefit. He can be anyone he wants to be in that instant, and thus, Don is born.

Next up is the Season 1 finale.

Mad Men s1e11: Indian Summer

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Fun fact: I loathe unseasonable warmth. Hate it. The irony that I live in Los Angeles, a dusty city in the midst of a 5 year nightmare drought, is not lost upon me.

In Indian Summer, a heatwave appears to be shaking everyone’s baseline.

Adam hangs himself. He’s wearing a nice suit, and leaves behind a pile of Don’s cash. This is awful not just from a death standpoint, but from the idea that we don’t know a hell of a lot about Adam yet to understand the ramifications of his desperate act. He came to the city to reconnect with his long lost half brother, and it turned out that that man wanted nothing to do with him. Devastating.

Cutting to the office, there’s some wonderful bits of Don and Peggy’s fledgling relationship in this episode. Ahh, The Relaxicizer! As it’s a product aimed at ladies for slimming purposes, Freddy suggests bring in Peggy as the guys seem more than a little clueless. Enter Peggy in her fat suit, and Don sees a glimmer of potential when she asks if she can change the name of the product. She brings this thing home, and learns of it’s masturbatory benefits.

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Dafuq?

image courtesy of Contemplatingmedia

Peggy goes on some trash date with an idiot. It’s becoming clear that she’s not like other girls her age, and she’s on this date seemingly as a formality to please her mother.  She chats about her job and work a lot, which turns him off. It’s funny to think that perhaps she started working at Sterling Cooper to meet a husband, but has ended up on a totally different path discovering something she really enjoys.

Their entire exchange is bizarre, it’s like they’re just shouting facts at one another. He makes some dickhead jab that she’s not as hot as ‘those Manhattan girls’, and Peggy leaves this schmuck with a sick burn.

“Those people in Manhattan? They are better than us, because they want things they’ve never seen.”

Enjoy your free Wise potato chips in hell, guy!

Back at the office, Don digs her pitch, and Peggy is proud of herself. That scene shows how the men of this era infantalize women; when the ‘real’ benefits of the product come up in code, it’s implied that women simply cannot achieve sexual satisfaction without the touch of a man; a point which Freddy Rumsen almost decks Kenny over, when it’s slipped in that his wife has one.

Speaking of infantalized women, enter Betty. It’s hot as hell outside for October, and she encounters an absurdly attractive door to door aircon salesman. He’s like Don 2.0 — a bright-eyed handsome salesman, completely saturated with Brylcreem. She lets him into the house to hear his pitch, but thinks better of it and shoos him away. Later on, Betty relaxicizes on the dryer, and fantasizes about having a bang with said Don 2.0.

Against better judgement, Roger comes into the office for a Lucky Strike meeting, way earlier than he should have been doing much of anything post-coronary. Bert thought he would restore faith in the agency by saying Roger could make it, but Lee Garner Sr. called his bluff.

Due to her discretion, Don and Bert call in Joan to put some slap on his face, and she thinks he might be sentimental with her for a beat but he just says she’s the finest piece of ass he ever had. Disappointing, and G R O S S.

(See also, #thingsmensay)

Aaaand, in the midst of holding a delicious pastrami sandwich, Roger has another heart attack. Mona rightfully says, “Go to hell, Bert”, as he’s taken away on a stretcher. Yikes.

After Roger is wheeled out, Don goes into Roger’s office to have a chat with Bert. He makes him a partner, and Pete Campbell is watching with an eagle eye. Thinking that Don will be moving up, Pete wants to snag a promotion. Pete vacillates between admiring, idealising, and loathing Don.

Pete: Tell me when they come out of there, will you?

Hildy: Sure. I’ll just sit here and watch the door. That’s all I’ll do.

Pete:WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TALKING TO??!

God bless Pete’s extravagant outrage at absolutely fuckall.

Don Draper seems to give a lot of advice that only realistically applies to Don Draper. Telling Peggy to be more like a man about what she wants re:raise, telling Adam to start a new life with the pile of gifted cash, and more examples to come. This shit makes sense in the context of someone who’s essentially concocted and moulded their life as Don has, but does it really apply to anyone else?

Don grants Peggy her raise, and they both split for the day. Trying to imagine having the corner office and the big man desk, Pete creeps in Don’s office when a mysterious package gets delivered. Like a complete fucking weirdo, he takes the box home with him. We know that it’s from Adam. Shit is about to get real.

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image courtesy of Contemplatingmedia

We close with Peggy’s new BFF, The Relaxicizer.

Mad Men s1e10: Long Weekend

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“When God closes a door, he opens a dress.”

Roger Sterling is into youth and staying young, and this episode makes that pretty evident. Even the 1960 election that’s on in the background, John F. Kennedy versus Richard Nixon, drives that idea home. Does Kennedy’s youth in this era and his familial advantages make him entitled as a result?

Don relates to Nixon more than nouveau riche Kennedy, which is telling. He views Kennedy as the new kid on the block who effortlessly has it all, versus Nixon the self-made man, the guy who became Vice President six years out of the Navy. “Kennedy, I see a silver spoon. Nixon, I see myself.”

Don’s meeting with Menken – Rachel and father – is more of the same; talking about how to modernise their department store and how much more advantageous the new, ‘younger’ version is.

This is the first appearance of an important character, Betty’s father, Gene. He’s got a new ladyfriend Gloria, and though Betty is distressed by the quick changeover, Don dismisses her concerns with the fact that he was previously married for 4 decades. He’s an old guy, he needs a woman’s touch, et cetera– someone to take care of him, from a pragmatic point of view. Don seemingly doesn’t give an emotional connection like what Gene may have had with his wife another thought, and Betty isn’t happy to have her concerns shrugged off.

Joan seems bored of Roger’s last minute idea of getting together over Labor Day weekend, unflappable as always. Even when her roomate Carol comes onto her and clumsily confesses her love, Joan is serene as ever. This is a woman who is generally not rattled by anything or anyone.

Seeing a sliver of Joan’s private life is illuminating. “These men, constantly building them up, and for what? Dinner? Jewellery?? Who cares!” She’s out to have fun and enjoy the city, and is encouraging Carol to do the same. They’re two young girls living in the city, after all!

They bring home some fossils they met at the bar, and where Joan is playful and going with the flow, Carol is stiff and very much sullen. Those dudes are pretty ratchet though, so I can’t blame her.

Double sided aluminum has done a casting call, and since Freddy Rumsen is an Archaic Man of the Time, it’s all young twin 20-something girls. Roger and Don go to pick out a pair to charm for the evening, and end up with these ladies.

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“Now, look far away and visionary.”

image courtesy of Photobucket

At one point Roger’s talking with Mirabelle about his daughter Margaret, not understanding why she’s so angry. He can’t seem to connect with his own teenage daughter, but here he is unloading all of this on an actual 20 year-old.

Roger has a heart attack sometime during round two with her, and she frantically calls for help. Don shoos the twins away, and once the ambulance arrives to take Roger, he’s deliriously asking for said 20 year-old. Don grabs him by the hair and slaps him across the face, reminding him that his wife is Mona.. true bro shit right there.

In the hospital bed, Roger seems genuinely remorseful and broken. He goes on about energy and the human soul, and true to form, Don has no real response for him other than asking “what do you want to hear?” Oy. Then Roger sees his wife and daughter. He’s greeted with love and immediately breaks down into tears, and Don doesn’t know how to process any of it.

The phone call Don has with Betty right after his friend has a heart attack mostly revolves around her trivial complaints about Gloria. This pretty much launches him directly at Rachel’s apartment.

Joan finds out about all this from Bert Cooper, as she goes to the office in the middle of the night. This is the first time you see Joan really react to something – she tearfully types out telegrams to Sterling Cooper clients, as Bert dictates.

Bert: “Don’t waste your youth on age, my dear.”
Joan: “He’s just a friend.”
Bert: “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Shots fired from Cooper! He read between the lines.

Not to get too Cronenberg, but there’s a few remarks about skin; Roger remarks on Mirabelle’s skin (translucent), later when he’s had his heart attack Don remarks that Roger’s skin seemed like paper. Fragile. Shaken at Rachel’s apartment, Don accuses her of looking right through him.

Don blows his emotional load all over Rachel in the afterglow. Turns out they’ve both got mothers that died in childbirth, though Don’s upbringing is infinitely more dire. This is the first time he’s talked about it aloud on the show, and he chooses to share it with Rachel in lieu of Betty. Lots of Fragile Man Feelings.

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Well, this looks like a completely normal way to lie down.

image courtesy of Mad Men Wikia

At this point, it appears that Rachel might draw some more depth out of him and help him to reform some of his views, but NOPE. Don appears to be nearly static as the series goes on – every character and every thing around him eventually changes, sometimes radically, yet he stays the same. Don is the black hole.

Mad Men s1e9: Shoot

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Ah, smarmy Jim Hobart. This indecent prune of a man will be a recurring theme, gnawing at the edges of Don’s professional life. In Shoot, he tries to get to Don via casting Betty as a model for Coca-Cola.

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image courtesy of Mad Men Wikia

Oh hey, it turns out Betty used to be a model in Manhattan! Makes sense that’s how she and Don met, being that they’re separately obsessed with image and all that. Adding to the image, she never liked giving the clothes back, and lets her shrink know that was always the hardest part of modelling for her.

As she’s telling the story of her relationship with Don and moving to the suburbs and suddenly feeling so old, she begins to talk about her mother harping on her appearance. And then, ironically, how much her mother hated her modelling, even calling her a prostitute. Jesus, lady..

Seems like life suddenly moved really quickly for Betty. One day, she’s got a lucrative fun career and life with friends in Manhattan as a model, then the next she’s engaged to Don, moving to the suburbs, saddled with kids and immediately defined by others as the stay at home mom and wife.

“You’re angry at your mother”

Betty is incensed, torn about how to feel, what’s ‘right’ versus reality. Her shrink speaks some truth, and she knows it. Alas, she’s not ‘supposed’ to feel that way about her mother.

“She wanted me to be beautiful so I could find a man. But then what? Just sit and smoke and let it go til you’re in a box?”

Is that all there is? Huh. Betty misses modelling, her own life, something greater; she wants to feel and be more than she appears. She’s living in a strange dollhouse, and wants out in some way. Never having had the opportunity to define herself, she’s craving something deeper.

In office news, Peggy busts an enormous hole in her skirt with the rip heard ’round the world, which is pretty much the worst feeling ever. Joan lends her a dress and some unsolicited “advice” in the form of wondering how she’ll get close to men if she’s (GASP) not slim! And how she assumed Peggy was only writing in an attempt to get close to Kinsey. Ay yi yi, Joan. These women have very different outlooks on life.

Later on, Pete decks Ken for making a comment about Peggy’s big fat ass. Class act, that Pete Campbell. Kenny had it coming!

In some of the worst CGI ever created (second only to LOST), Polly somehow bites the neighbour’s dove pigeon in mid-air.

As compared to this trashterpiece, from LOST‘s fifth season..

Horrendous CGI aside, this guy is a maniac and scares the shit out of Sally and Bobby, threatening to kill their dog. What an asshole neighbour.

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image courtesy of KnowYourMeme

Jim Hobart mails Don the proofs from Betty’s photoshoot, using it as leverage to get him to come work for McCann. Knowing that he’ll stay at Sterling Cooper and what this will mean for Betty, he’s disappointed by this lowbrow move. Don goes to chat with Roger and emphasises how he wants to stay where he is. This is also the first time we learn that Don works at SC with no contract, something he would unlikely be able to swing at a bigger agency. They talk cash, and when Roger asks why, Don simply responds, “I like the way you do business”. No shady shit.

Don: “If I leave this place, one day, it will not be for more advertising.”

Roger: “What else is there?”

Don: “I don’t know, life being lived. I’d like to stop talking about it and get back to it.”

Roger: “I’ve worked with a lot of men like you, and if you had to choose a place to die, it would be in the middle of a pitch.”

Don: “I’ve done that. I want to do something else.”

Done and dusted.

It’s heartbreaking watching Betty at the end of the photoshoot, finding out the news that her photos won’t be used. Don of course knows the real reason, and Betty spins it positively to him at dinner, trying to assert some sort of control over the situation. He does his best to keep it light by emphasising that she already has a job, and that’s being a wonderful mother.

Don says some lovely, heartfelt things to the tune of “I would’ve given anything to have a had a mother like you. Beautiful and kind, filled with love like an angel”. As flattered as she is, this is the last thing Betty wants to hear, and she lets it marinate.

The next morning, she’s back to the mom routine and is pretty over it circa ~1pm. As quickly as she was defined as this mother and housewife, she’s annoyed that she had no say in the matter. She is angry with her mother.

Shooting at her garbage neighbour’s pigeons, here’s a lady taking out her aggression and attempting to take control. Iconic.

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image courtesy of MadMenDaily

“Eventually you come up here, or you die wondering.” Prophetic words from Jim Hobart. Seeya in a bit, weirdo.

Mad Men s1e8: The Hobo Code

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This episode informs a bunch of Don’s character through a flashback to his childhood. The Hobo Code is one of my favourite episodes in the series.

Before we get to the really meaty stuff, Pete and Peggy have an early morning bang in the office, and Pete proceeds to get all weird and deep. He’s talking about his wife and how she’s basically another stranger to him, implying that Peggy is a little more than that. See also, Things Men Say to Mistresses 101.

Contrary to this roundabout compliment, he’s a massively miserable prick at the bar that afternoon while celebrating Peggy’s successful copy in the Belle Jolie meeting. Mark your Man! She’s dancing and having fun, and when she invites him to join in he flatly tells her “I don’t like you like this”. Lighten the fuck up, Pete! It’s a nod at how closed off he really is, that being confronted with something real like Peggy genuinely enjoying herself, he’s got no goddamned idea what to do.

Though she’s upset by his supercilious remark, Peggy is finding her footing with the men at Sterling Cooper as well as her writing. She’s digging to find her true self, along with Salvatore albeit in a different way in a near-sexual encounter with Elliott at a hotel bar. Ah, Sal. Ya should’ve gone to see his view of Central Park!

So, Don is the guy with the escape plan. He’s likely mapped out every single possible way out within minutes of being in any one place, and when Bert Cooper gives him a $2500 check with a very close to home speech attached to it, he panics.

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“The hell did you just call me?”

image courtesy of Mad Men Wikia

Bert: “When you hit 40, you realize you’ve met or seen every kind of person there is, and I know what kind you are.. because I believe we are alike.”
Don: “.. I assume that’s flattering.”
Bert: “By that I mean that you are a productive and reasonable man, and in the end completely self-interested. It’s strength. We are different– unsentimental about all the people who depend on our hard work.”

Don doesn’t let much on about himself, so he’s fairly spooked by this bit of accuracy. He runs off to see Midge and is greeted by some ginger in an actual Fez. Whilst stoned in her beatnik paradise of weed and Miles Davis, Don remembers meeting a Hobo one day while growing up. Since it’s the Great Depression and all, he comes to stay on the Whitman family farm for a meal in exchange for some work. Though frightened at first, Dick is drawn to him.

Bert Cooper and this Hobo think themselves a cut above the rest of the world because they each follow a self-centred credo. They both share that wisdom with Don, hoping to show him how their way of thinking distinguishes them. As a kid, Dick absorbs everything the Hobo says with rapt fascination and understanding beyond his years. This is a kid who’s been looking for an escape route for as long as he can remember.

Dick: I’m supposed to tell you to say your prayers.

Hobo: Praying won’t help you from this place, kid. Best keep your mind on your mother, she’ll probably look after you.

Dick: She ain’t my momma.

Hobo: We all wish we were from someplace else, believe me.

Dick: Ain’t you heard? I’m a whore child.

Hobo: No. I hadn’t heard anything about that.

Dick: You don’t talk like a bum.

Hobo: I’m not. I’m a gentleman of the rails.. for me, every day is brand new. Every day’s a brand new place, people, what have you.

Dick: So you got no home, that’s sad..

Hobo: What’s at home? I had a family once: a wife, a job, a mortgage. I couldn’t sleep at night tied to all those things. Then death came to find me.

Dick: Did you see him?

Hobo: Only every night. So one morning, I freed myself with the clothes on my back. Goodbye! Now I sleep like a stone: sometimes under the stars, the rain, the roof of a barn. But I sleep like a stone. Tomorrow I’ll be leaving this place, that’s for certain. If death was coming anyplace, it’s here, kid, creeping around every corner.

The next morning post-work, Archie stiffs the Hobo the nickel that was offered and tells him to leave. As he’s walking down the street, Dick sees that their house is marked with a sickle – “a dishonest man lives here”. Not inaccurate.

When Don comes to his senses and goes to bounce, the beatniks really rail into him about ‘inventing the lie’ and all that other crap. Don offers some devastating nihilistic realness.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie. There is no system. The universe is indifferent.”

The episode closes the following morning with a flurry of typewriters and the minutiae of people chatting, closing in on his emblazoned office door; Donald Draper, a different type of dishonest man.

I mean, good lord. This episode packs so much into a couple of scenes, and Don carries these ideas with him throughout the show’s run. Through those flashbacks and his interaction with Cooper, you really learn what makes Don tick. He’s constructed this bulletproof disguise for the outside world, but Dick Whitman is still rattling around in there somewhere.

But eventually,  if you centre your life around yourself and escapism, pretty soon everything starts to look like a door.