roger sterling

Mad Men s2e9: Six Month Leave

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“Some people just hide in plain sight.”

Don is living in a hotel on the morn of Marilyn Monroe’s death. In the office, Peggy is thinking like Don, grateful that Playtex didn’t buy their Jackie and Marilyn campaign.

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image courtesy of Tom + Lorenzo

Betty is taking care of some house shit in an attempt to feel normal. Time to put new contact paper in the drawers, defrost the icebox, attempt to open your bastard husband’s locked desk drawer with a letter opener.. then pass out, face down in the lounge with a glass of red. Just then, Sara Beth swings by to borrow a dress; Betty claims she’s sick. SB is crushing on Arthur, and Betty raises an eyebrow.

At Sterling Cooper, Freddy Rumsen overdoes it. He’s excessively sweaty and red, even for him, a guy who consistently looks dank; he pours Sal a comically enormous glass of whiskey that nearly has a meniscus, rehearses the Samsonite presentation, then pisses himself. Pete is disgusted, Peggy is concerned, and Sal can’t stop laughing. Since Freddy passes out almost immediately in his office chair, Sal tells Peggy to present in the meeting for the first time. On her way, she chides Pete for being a judgemental dick.

Samsonite goes really well for Peggy, and Freddy apologises for being a drunk mess the next day. She’s very encouraging and positive, hoping to sweep it under the rug. However, Pete wants to look good to the execs so he spills the beans and takes the credit for having Peggy present at the last minute.

Don, Roger, Duck and Pete meet about Freddy, he hears the news. “The man is a trainwreck”. Don is very much opposed to firing him, but he’s one against three.

Don: “I don’t want to throw him away..”

Roger: “Your loyalty is starting to become a liability.”

Betty is back at the stables, observing how Sara Beth interacts with Arthur. Time to stir the pot. She plants the seed that SB talks about him a lot, and invites him to the lunch she was supposed to have with only SB. If she can’t control anything in her own life, it’s time to fuck around elsewhere. Childish, sure, but she doesn’t have any legit coping skills.

Speaking of teenage girls, the junior execs are making fun of Freddy. Word has gotten out. Don gets real pissed off when he overhears and puts them in their place. “Sure. It’s just a man’s name, right?”

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image courtesy of Giphy

Don, a man with two names, takes that shit very seriously. He’s trying to build something with the Donald Draper persona, and to hear junior execs malign the reputation of an old player in the game like Freddy Rumsen, he just ain’t having it.

Joan is taking a breather in Roger’s office, surprisingly upset about Marilyn’s suicide. After all, Marilyn was an icon as an independent woman of the time. She used her femininity to get where she needed to go, and was very successful at it. Her death appears to represent the loss of that strong female figure that Joan has been trying to emulate, but despite all the good things, Marilyn still got knocked back down to size; just as Joan did a couple of weeks back with her temp job in Harry’s department. Tragic.

Roger, as an older guy of the time, has no goddamned context for her sadness and doesn’t take her seriously.

“This world destroyed her. One day you’ll lose someone who’s important to you.. you’ll see. It’s very painful.”

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image courtesy of Mad Men Wikia

Speaking of guys of that time, it’s time to send Freddy off for a leave of absence to dry out. Natch, Roger and Don make a booze-soaked night of it.

“To Monday morning– it’ll be here faster than you think.”

“I’m Dick Dollars, this is Mike Moneybags.. and this..” “Tilden Katz!” Don opts to use Rachel Menken’s Boilerplate Husband(TM)’s name to get into an underground casino. It’s 1962 rich people speakeasy time, and thankfully it’s not one of those intolerable hipster speakeasys with $23 cocktails made by equally intolerable “mixologists” with overly curated facial hair.

Roger pieces together that Don and Betty are separated, and asks what’s up. Natch, Don is cagey. Right in the midst of that, Don spots Jimmy Barrett and sees red; he walks right up to him and punches that fucker square in the face.

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what did the five fingers say to the face? // image courtesy of Giphy

Freddy gets a right proper sendoff, and Don really emphasises the clean slate idea. The man with the escape plan wouldn’t see anything particularly awful about this situation. Freddy is concerned with what he’ll tell his wife, something that Don has likely never considered.

As Don and Roger have a nightcap together, he reveals that he’s staying at the Roosevelt. He also reveals that he doesn’t feel badly like he should, he feels relieved and doesn’t know what to do. Don is so disconnected with most people in his life, that this is not shocking news. He imparts some words of wisdom that Roger takes a little too on the nose..

“It’s your life. You don’t know how long it’s gonna be, but you know it’s got a bad ending. You have to move forward.”

Peggy gets word that she is taking over all of Freddy’s business. Don is peeved that Peggy didn’t tell him and was ambushed by Pete.

Mona barrels into Don’s office, clearly pissed. Roger is splitting from their 25-year marriage, due to drunk nightcap talk he had with Don, and she blames him. Turns out it’s Jane!

Don figures out that Jane must’ve slipped something Roger’s way about him being separated from Betty. Time for yet another new secretary..

“If I don’t go into that office every day, who am I?”

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 s1e7: Red in the Face

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

Mad Men s1e5: 5G

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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?

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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.

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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”.