Mad Men s1e11: Indian Summer

09.15.201609.15.2016 / vm / 2 Comments

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.

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.

image courtesy of Contemplatingmedia

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

Mad Men s1e9: Shoot

09.13.201609.14.2016 / vm / 1 Comment

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.

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.

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.

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 s1e7: Red in the Face

09.09.2016 / vm / 2 Comments

This episode offers some more depth to Roger Sterling. He invites himself to Don and Betty’s house for dinner, and a vague form of mayhem ensues. From the sounds of it, he’s sort of over his teenage daughter Margaret ruining his dinner options.

Roger is inferring bits about Don’s background. By the way he “drops his Gs”, he figures Don was raised on a farm. Confronted with this observation, Don immediately leaves in search of more liquor.

Roger drunkenly shares stories about fighting in WWII, but Don seems more interested in how he felt. We can tell that Don felt mostly fear while in Korea, and he generally doesn’t talk about it per Betty. Roger speaks of some dark experiences tinged with a bit of apathy. “Bored, what about scared?” Don is trying to see if his own fear was founded, if that’s how other men feel about their time in the army.

Betty’s friendliness is mistaken for flirting, and Roger takes it to a wildly inappropriate place out of nowhere. Poor Betty! And natch, Don blows a fucking gasket about it, as it was the style at the time. Apparently that mess is somehow Betty’s fault? Yeesh. She stands up to Don as best she can, but he ultimately has the last word.

An iconic moment appears in this episode, thanks to Pete Campbell’s subdued outrage that none of his Sterling Cooper pals know what in the hell this ceramic abomination is. IT’S A CHIP AND DIP!

image courtesy of Imgur.com

Pete goes to return the redundant #chipanddip on his lunch break and attempts to charm the pretty customer service girl to no avail. He doesn’t have the inherent allure of his Hot Idiot friend Matherton, who happened to be in the department store at the same time. Pete classily lets her know that Matherton has The Clap, and buys a BB gun with store credit. Incredible. Of course, Trudy loses her shit at him so he meekly keeps the BB gun at the office.

The next morning, Pete delivers a particularly peculiar monologue about hunting deer to Peggy. She’s super into it, and immediately seeks out a massive fucking cherry danish. As you do.

Oh my god, and another iconic moment.

WHAT DID THE FIVE FINGERS SAY TO THE FACE?

image courtesy of Buzzfeed

So, Helen is pissed that Betty gave her son Glen a lock of her blonde hair. All of this is too weird for words. Betty slaps her across the face in the produce section, and immediately bounces.

“My mother always said you’re painting a masterpiece,

make sure to hide the brushstrokes.”

Ruminating upon her day, she tells Francine that she’s not some perfect marshmallow sweet girl. But Betty believes that keeping her appearances up and being attractive to men means that she’s ‘earning her keep’. She’s working out a way to feel OK about Roger coming onto her in the kitchen that night, that just so long as he finds her desirable it’s all good? Sort of a mess, if you ask me.

“When a man gets to a point in his life when his name’s on the building, he can get an unnatural sense of entitlement.”

Roger tries to apologise with a very thinly veiled analogy about how ‘at some point we’ve all parked in the wrong garage’, and Don ain’t buying it. He exacts his own sort of revenge, sneakily arranging with Hollis the elevator operator to ensure the elevator is “down” later that afternoon.

They go to lunch for oysters and martinis, which sounds delicious in theory, but these motherfuckers plow through 48 oysters together on top of New York cheesecake. And then throw in 20-something flights of stairs..

Roger Sterling is a compelling character, and the one thing he’s obsessed with and desires most is youth– which he intrinsically cannot attain. This is something he’ll be faced with throughout the series.

Don drives that point home with his elevator prank.

Today, I’m on the Roger Sterling diet.

image courtesy of Imgur.com

And for whatever reason, I can’t find the horns version of the Rosemary Clooney song that closes out this episode. RUDE. Here’s the 1952 original!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9OM-3pFXAs

Mad Men s1e6: Babylon

09.08.2016 / vm / 2 Comments

It’s Mother’s day! Don is not fully engrossed in breakfast-in-bed-for-Betty, and promptly falls over while reading the funny papers on the staircase. Somehow, he narrowly avoids death. This falling-backwards-down-the stairs-thing is my actual nightmare, by the way.

He then reminisces about Adam being born, as we glimpse Uncle Mac and the gawky kid Dick Whitman once was. His stepmother named Adam after ‘the first man’ which is just so clever.

S H A D E

image courtesy of TheWrap.com

Mother’s Day is sort of bittersweet for Betty, whose mother died semi-recently. When she tries to open up and express what she’s feeling, a totally normal thing to do within the confines of marriage, Don shuts it down with his fucked out views on grieving, alluding to it as “extended self-pity”. Jesus Rollerblading Christ, that’s dark. Please refer to Sophia Loren’s face, above.

Here is the start of delving into Betty’s obsession with appearance. Clearly her mother instilled these ideas in her head from the getgo, and as a result she’s very concerned and insecure about ageing. Don is dismissive for all the wrong reasons and looks bored, which is always encouraging (once again, please refer to the flawfree Sophia Loren). He tries to turn it all into a bang sesh, and Betty flips the script, attempting to reel him in with reminders that she’s only for him. Don looks taken aback and a little irritated.

This is the first episode where we see Joan and Roger together, in the hotel afterglow. Their relationship seems comprised of witty banter, though you can see that he does care about her. She’s flippant about their whole arrangement, being pragmatic and knowing that it won’t last. Unflappable as usual.

image courtesy of BasementRejects

And hey, here’s the first appearance of Freddy Rumsen! Good god is this guy delightfully insulting/tonedeaf about women. Fun fact: when it looks like someone is drinking too much in 1960, that person is a certified lush.

Peggy is discovered for her creative prowess in the Belle Jolie brainstorming session, which really launches her character arc. Joan is clearly semi-bored by the brainstorming sesh, snark all the way. She’s really unlike anyone in that room and knows it; it’s the same idea with Peggy, though different in the execution. Peggy is thinking of ways to write for the product, whereas Joan is just enjoying being in charge. Peggy doesn’t want to be one of 100 colours in a box, and she’s starting to find her footing and her voice.

Joan is irritated that Peggy was recognised for her budding talent re:copy. Of course, Joan has been recognised in the office, but I’d guess not necessarily for anything like that. More behind closed doors, no shade intended. Their unconventional lady kinship will grow throughout the course of the series.

Working on an account, Don needs to know more about Israel and Jewish history than he can infer from Exodus and history books. Natch, he rings up Rachel. He is uncharacteristically super tryhard during his ‘working lunch’ with her– he’s nervous and not put together, being overly complimentary, and Rachel is having precisely none of it.

They speak about Israel, as Don is trying to find something real and unsentimental. He can definitely relate to exile, and that’s about it thus far. Rachel leaves him with a lot to chew on. She refers to Israel as “more of an idea than a place”. And, utopia/utopos; meaning the good place, and the place that cannot be. A perplexing and captivating idea, reality for all walks of life.

Later, she rings her sister Barbara to chat about Don and whatever potential may possibly exist. Wise beyond her 28 years, she methodically maps out bits and pieces of what could or could not be.

“Sometimes, things come. Good things, but there’s no future in them.”

Since he couldn’t get it in with Rachel, Don heads to the Village to see Midge. Watching him in the dim beatnik bar is pretty amazing. He seems a little more at home around those types somehow, he’s funnier and a touch more real. “I blow up bridges.” Midge’s friend refers to advertising as perpetuating the lie, and though Don follows up with a snarky response, he doesn’t entirely balk at the idea.

Don: “People want to be told what to do so badly that they’ll listen to anyone.”

Roy: “When you say people, I have a feeling you’re talking about .. thou.”

Preach it, proto-hippie.

The ending of this episode is pretty fantastic. You can’t help but feel the loneliness and isolation seeping from these characters.

Mad Men s1e5: 5G

09.07.2016 / vm / 3 Comments

There’s a lot to unpack in this episode, but first we go from the metaphorical Who is Don Draper to the .. wait .. hold the goddamn phone, Who literally IS Don Draper?

image courtesy of Vulture

Adam Whitman pops up in the city, and Don is not pleased. Apparently someone does read Advertising Age after all. He comes to Don with love and acceptance, just happy to see his half brother after all this time and is met with stone cold rejection.

Mad Men gives us this suave untouchable symbol, this Don Draper and his illusion of complete control. He weaves bullshit webs, and Peggy gets stuck in one when she accidentally overhears his phone conversation with mistress Midge. When Betty and the kids turn up at the office for portrait day, Peggy assumes that Don’s gone off to get it in (when he’s really at lunch with Adam), and momentarily panics. As an honest person, Peggy doesn’t really know how to handle it but to Don, it’s second nature and he’s back with an effortless excuse.

He’s got it all in check until Adam shows up; his entire demeanour becomes the Don we come to know in the rest of the series moving forward. It’s almost like that Don didn’t exist until 5G. And then when he admits to Adam that he missed him, we see some warmth and hope, a glimpse at who he was.

“Of course I did”. The way Don’s face changes says it all. However, he stiffens at the end of the lunch, and his “this never happened” mantra begins. I feel like he’s not sure he believes it when he says it at this point, but it becomes true to him in time.

At first glance, this is a man who’s so deeply ashamed of his past that he’s pretty much panicking and launching money at the problem. But looking deeper, he feels isolated and this helps shed light on his actions; yet he does it to himself. He’s a self-haunted guy.

His entire façade crumbles then hardens– the tone of his voice resets, the whole nine. These are the roots of Don being a million miles away. He’s looking at an old photo of himself with Adam, whiskey in hand, burning it in an effigy to his past. He’s really driving home the tryhard THIS NEVER HAPPENED approach and it’s all so fucking dramatic, but it works in this context.

Brass tacks, all Adam wants is a connection with Don. Love, family, and companionship. Don isn’t prepared to offer any of these things, and only withdraws further over the course of the series/decade or so as the show goes on. It starts off as mysterious and interesting, but ends up being fucking depressing and infuriating.

“I have a life, it only goes in one direction — forward”.

Don’s fundamental misunderstanding of how human connection works is on display here. He’s plying Adam with 5 grand and quite literally cannot understand why he’s upset, cannot get why that isn’t enough. Don figures that he salted the earth of his past self and started over, why can’t Adam do the same?

One of the B plots in this episode is Kenny Cosgrove getting a short story published in The Atlantic, making the other Sterling Cooper guys jealous. Pete convinces Trudy to talk to her vaguely oily ex, and Pete is apoplectic that all she can “get” is Boys Life magazine.. haha. Roger jokes in a meeting that everyone at Sterling Cooper has the first ten pages of a novel locked in a drawer somewhere, Don quips that it’s actually five.. but all we see in his locked drawer is a bunch of Go Cash and things he’d rather forget. It’s all about projecting that image in whatever small way possible.

Seeing the stark contrast between Adam’s hellscape hotel room and Don’s lush master bedroom at home is pretty jarring. This thing Don has built for himself, he doesn’t want to lose that. He’s leaving behind that dismal past he doesn’t want in lieu of the persona he wants to attain, to play out.

God-awful portrait aside..

image courtesy of Mad Men Wikia

At the end of the episode, Betty expresses to Don that she likes seeing her dad, a feeling he can’t relate to in the least.

“We gave you everything- we gave you your name”.

“What difference does it make? People change their names”.

the MARS DEN

thoughts & opinions of one VM || LA-NJ-UK

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