Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Thirteen, "In Care Of..."
This was probably the best season finale Mad Men has ever produced. And this season needed it. I'd pretty much given up hope for Don, yet he--and the series with him--were profoundly redeemed and I'm hoping it sticks for him this time. The ending of "In Care Of" strikes me as an inverted image of the end of the first season's finale. In that episode--which also happened right before Thanksgiving--Don had just given the brilliant ad pitch to Kodak for their Wheel, which he renamed "Carousel." While his family life was in disarray, he presented nostalgic photo images suggesting they were happy and perfectly suited. After it was over, he slogged home to an empty house--Betty having taken the kids to her father's for the holiday without Don--and we last see him sitting on the stairs, alone. In this episode--five seasons and about eight years later--Don starts out giving a pitch to Hershey's that is full of nostalgia and a false image of his childhood. In a far-away voice, he tells a lovely story of his boyhood and his father buying him Hershey's chocolate bars. "His love and the chocolate were tied together," Don lies. The candy is "the childhood symbol of love." The men from Hershey's like this sentimental evocation of their candy's power and seem to be considering advertising for the first time. But then Don looks over at Ted Chaough, who had just confessed to Don his need and desire to start over with his family--for his kids. And, who had mentioned his father's alcoholism to Don when he told Don he knew he couldn't just stop cold turkey. Here's Don's partner, wanting to start afresh and be a better father than his was. And there's Don, bullshitting about his own father, his family life in disarray again as his daughter continually rejects him. Don glances down at his hands that start to shake and--tells the truth. Which is also a touching story. He tells all of them sitting at the table--three of his partners and the candy execs--that he was an orphan raised in a whore house; that he was unwanted and unloved; that the closest he got to feeling wanted was when one of the "girls" let him go through her johns' pockets while she was with them and root out the change; and, that Hershey's candy bars made him feel "like a normal kid...It was the only sweet thing in my life." "You want us to advertise that?" one of the men says. With that, Don Draper's career at the newly-named Sterling Cooper & Partners is likely over and he is given the same chance to start anew that he granted Ted. (I wonder if Ted's absence at the Thanksgiving meeting signified that he felt differently than his partners about giving Don this "sabbatical." Did he vote yes on Don's forced time to "regroup" because he wanted to help Don also be free to get in touch with the "good man" Ted told him he knows is there? I'd like to think so.) Unlike the first season's Thanksgiving, Don doesn't spend this one alone. He's with his children. And begins their day with some truth-telling to them too with a visit back to where so much of his emotional damage occurred. He's taken the steps to move out of Dante's Inferno and into Purgatorio, the place to work through and off his sins.
In the post I wrote after the season premiere, I wondered who Don's Beatrice might be, if indeed the writers did intend--with the image of him reading "Inferno"--to start him on this pilgrimage. With Sally's look to Don at the very end, I'm wondering if it might be her. Correct me if I'm wrong and forgetting another instance of this, but I think that she might be the first person on the show to term anyone's behavior "immoral": "I wouldn't want to do anything immoral," she pointedly tells Don when he lets her know she's been subpoenaed in connection with the burglar case. He clearly takes that to heart since the next shot is of him in a bar, looking disturbed. The Jesus peddler comes in and triggers Don's memories of a travelling preacher who came to the whore house when he was a teen. Don has good cause to be wary of rigid moralizers. His step-mother was one and she made his life a living hell. Her kind of self-righteous moralizing is dangerous and damaging to others (like the young child she was raising) and is self-deceptive. Mrs. Whitman was a horrible, hateful woman--not a virtuous one. Yet, if Don's reasonable rejection of his step-mother's brand of piety and morals then leads him also to reject any other consideration of morality and a worthwhile basis on which to build a moral system, he is truly lost. To me, his behavior that we have witnessed for six seasons is so often immoral, not because it breaches a biblical or otherwise religious code, but because it hurts so many people--and hurts Don himself. At various points in the series, he recognizes that--as someone who was so hurt as a child--he wants not to hurt others: he tells Betty that he won't hit Bobby because he knew what it was like to be hit by his father; he won't participate in the prostitution of Joan and tries to talk her out of it because he knows how hurtful prostitution is--not because some religions rail against it but because it dehumanizes people. He shines in these moments, but in too many other moments settles into the patterns of behavior he observed and experienced while growing up--cruelty and the use of others for his own satisfaction and to help him closet off his demons. The brothel-visiting preacher was onto something when he told young Dick that "the only unpardonable sin is to believe god cannot forgive you." Don does seem to have always believed that he's unforgiveable. If he can find his way to forgive and accept himself, he might be able to pull himself up that mountain that Dante imagines in "Purgatorio."
I like the way this episode focused on fathers and each of the featured male characters' desire to repair the connections with their children rather than just focus on their sex lives. Don, Ted, Roger, and Pete are all shown to have regrets about their estrangement from their children. The images of Pete--who's never seemed to care anything for his daughter--tenderly stroking the sleeping Tammy's hair, seeming regretful as he's about to leave her to move clear across the country, and of Roger placing his hat on Kevin's head after accepting that Joan has "invited" her into Kevin's life, not her own, were touching. It will be interesting to see where they go next season. Ted Chaough proved to be the basically good guy I thought he likely was and that Peggy kept arguing was there too. I felt for both Ted and Peggy for the difficult bind they're in, but think Ted made the right choice. He seems to know himself so much better than Don when he tells Peggy, "I wanted this so much, but I have a family....I have to hold on to them or I'll get lost in the chaos." Peggy is understandably hurt and throws back at him, "Well, aren't you lucky. To have decisions." But, Peggy too has decisions. When Ted first told her he was going to leave his wife, she said, "Don't say that. I'm not that girl." But, she then started on the path to be "that girl." Saying 'no' to their feelings for each other is incredibly difficult, but Peggy, too, can make the decision to move on. She seems to start that process when she sits down in Don's chair and looks thoughtfully out the window. Too many talented and ambitious women in that period were made to choose between a career and marriage. Not enough men were willing to have a career woman for a wife. That's sad, but I hope she'll see herself as someone with decisions to make. Her future, too, is an open book for next season.
Megan is also an open question. She wonders why she's still fighting for their marriage. Is her walkling out of the apartment the sign that their marriage is over? It probably should be, but another thing to wonder about for next season.
Finally--the firm. I wonder what Joan thought about suspending Don--with no return date. Cutler and Sterling were standing near Cooper's chair; Joan was off to the side. What, if anything, does the tableau signify? And why did Duck show up? The new logo was the first thing highlighted in this episode--on the door and on the loud, orange coffee cups. It and the new name seem made for almost all the partners, but Don and Joan. SC & P can encompass Sterling, Cooper, Campbell, Cutler, and Chaough. No Draper, the man who reveals his undesirable low-class origins in a whore house. No Harris, the woman the male partners made behave like a whore to get her partnership. Most of the men at the company have no scruples about visiting and using prostitutes. But, I can't help but think that their suspension of Don at the end comes not just from his lapses and unacceptable behavior at the Hershey meeting, but also because these blue-blooded men can't abide the thought of partnership with a man who came from such a "sordid" background. I now really am looking forward to Season Seven.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Rosemary's Baby
Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Twelve, "The Quality of Mercy"
Peggy ends this episode fabulously. With strength and insight into the character of Don--whom she knows so well--she confronts him after his betrayal of her and Ted in the meeting with the Johnson & Johnson exec. "You're a monster!" she lets him know, before walking out of his office. She doesn't buy his bullshit that he's "just looking out for the agency," and clearly Don doesn't either, since the last shot we see, he's curled up in a fetal position on the couch, about as miserable as we've ever seen him. All of this in an episode that centers around allusions to the popular film of that year, "Rosemary's Baby." So, is Don metaphorically Rosemary's baby--a monster conceived by the devil and a severely mistreated woman through hatred and deceit, born to serve the goals of--and be used by--others, hailed as something special, but living in a very dark place? Or is he Rosemary's husband--user and deceiver of a woman, participant in bizarre rituals? Or a bit of both?
The period in which this season takes place was prone to fears of chaos, violence, and loss of control--and not without reason. Mad Men has featured the Kennedy and King assassinations, the Democratic National Convention, and repeatedly alluded to the increased violence in the city. We see Don watching a Nixon campaign ad that plays to fears of urban violence and orders its viewers to "vote like your whole world depended on it." Ira Levin's 1967 novel and Roman Polanski's 1968 film use supernatural horror to play on and evoke readers'/viewers' fears of complete loss of conscious control over their lives and the terrifying and monstrous potential results. Megan deems it "really, really scary." Peggy and Ted use it as the basis for a children's aspirin commercial. The title character is unknowingly coerced into a sexual relationship with the devil and made to carry his baby to further the goals of a group of devil worshippers led by her next door neighbors. Along the way, she must face up to the fact that her husband is not who he seemed to be and has betrayed her--which is why I see its themes played out throughout the episode. Sally and Peggy have both figured out that Don is not to be trusted. And, with that, he loses two of the very important people in his life. You can see this as tragic; you can see this as just desserts for his horrendous behavior to those who love and admire him, but it does seem that Don is about as low as he's ever been--in the depths of the Inferno the season started out with. He's rejected by his daughter and his protege who understands him like no one else--save Anna Draper--ever has, because he is devoid of self-control, prone to just following his emotions and physical drives wherever they lead him: to a hurried and careless sexual encounter with Sylvia--that he couldn't have thought Sally would walk in on, but her son or husband easily could have--and to jealousy and bitterness over Peggy's and Ted's relationship that lead him to the typical abusive man idea that 'if I can't have her, no one can.' He's now a father whose child despises him; like his own father, whom he despised and didn't want to be like, he uses women, follows his most base instincts, and shows no regard for his children. He screws over his partner--the nice partner--and Peggy just out of spite and because he can. And he can because they trusted him. The self-righteous pedestal he puts himself on while talking to Ted after the meeting was truly despicable given who he is and what he's done: "Everybody sees it. Just ask your secretary. Your judgment is impaired. You're not thinking with your head." And--"we've all been there; well, not with Peggy..." Yet, it's Ted with Peggy that has brought out this monstrous behavior in Don. Is he really unable to recognize all that Peggy has done for and been to him? Does he deserve Peggy's charge of being a monster? I think so. What do you think?
Like in the last episode, Sally plays a prominent role here. She's smart, driven, and interested in worthy things like the Model UN, yet the poor kid is stuck with such shits for parents--stuck between Don, who's all id, and Betty, who's solely focused on the superficial aspects of what other affluent people think. She tells the woman at the prep school that it's so hard for a girl in that time period to navigate her way in the world. And that difficulty can only be exacerbated if Don Draper and Betty Francis are your parents. Those girls she meets at the school won't be any help to her either. I'd love to see a Mad Men sequel focused on Sally in the seventies, dealing with life as an adult having to cart around the baggage of her upbringing.
A few more quick thoughts:
--We finally got more info on Bob Benson. Pete is so slimy, but it will be interesting to see how this scenario plays out;
--Poor Ken Cosgrove. The last couple of episodes he's been featured in always start out with me thinking we have to be inside a nightmare of his, but it's just the crazy Chrysler guys. Jeez! "I hate cars. I hate guns." He gives up the account and is happy he's going to be a father. I love Ken Cosgrove.
--This episode didn't have a lot of humor in it, but watching Don act out the baby in Peggy's commercial was hysterical!
Peggy ends this episode fabulously. With strength and insight into the character of Don--whom she knows so well--she confronts him after his betrayal of her and Ted in the meeting with the Johnson & Johnson exec. "You're a monster!" she lets him know, before walking out of his office. She doesn't buy his bullshit that he's "just looking out for the agency," and clearly Don doesn't either, since the last shot we see, he's curled up in a fetal position on the couch, about as miserable as we've ever seen him. All of this in an episode that centers around allusions to the popular film of that year, "Rosemary's Baby." So, is Don metaphorically Rosemary's baby--a monster conceived by the devil and a severely mistreated woman through hatred and deceit, born to serve the goals of--and be used by--others, hailed as something special, but living in a very dark place? Or is he Rosemary's husband--user and deceiver of a woman, participant in bizarre rituals? Or a bit of both?
The period in which this season takes place was prone to fears of chaos, violence, and loss of control--and not without reason. Mad Men has featured the Kennedy and King assassinations, the Democratic National Convention, and repeatedly alluded to the increased violence in the city. We see Don watching a Nixon campaign ad that plays to fears of urban violence and orders its viewers to "vote like your whole world depended on it." Ira Levin's 1967 novel and Roman Polanski's 1968 film use supernatural horror to play on and evoke readers'/viewers' fears of complete loss of conscious control over their lives and the terrifying and monstrous potential results. Megan deems it "really, really scary." Peggy and Ted use it as the basis for a children's aspirin commercial. The title character is unknowingly coerced into a sexual relationship with the devil and made to carry his baby to further the goals of a group of devil worshippers led by her next door neighbors. Along the way, she must face up to the fact that her husband is not who he seemed to be and has betrayed her--which is why I see its themes played out throughout the episode. Sally and Peggy have both figured out that Don is not to be trusted. And, with that, he loses two of the very important people in his life. You can see this as tragic; you can see this as just desserts for his horrendous behavior to those who love and admire him, but it does seem that Don is about as low as he's ever been--in the depths of the Inferno the season started out with. He's rejected by his daughter and his protege who understands him like no one else--save Anna Draper--ever has, because he is devoid of self-control, prone to just following his emotions and physical drives wherever they lead him: to a hurried and careless sexual encounter with Sylvia--that he couldn't have thought Sally would walk in on, but her son or husband easily could have--and to jealousy and bitterness over Peggy's and Ted's relationship that lead him to the typical abusive man idea that 'if I can't have her, no one can.' He's now a father whose child despises him; like his own father, whom he despised and didn't want to be like, he uses women, follows his most base instincts, and shows no regard for his children. He screws over his partner--the nice partner--and Peggy just out of spite and because he can. And he can because they trusted him. The self-righteous pedestal he puts himself on while talking to Ted after the meeting was truly despicable given who he is and what he's done: "Everybody sees it. Just ask your secretary. Your judgment is impaired. You're not thinking with your head." And--"we've all been there; well, not with Peggy..." Yet, it's Ted with Peggy that has brought out this monstrous behavior in Don. Is he really unable to recognize all that Peggy has done for and been to him? Does he deserve Peggy's charge of being a monster? I think so. What do you think?
Like in the last episode, Sally plays a prominent role here. She's smart, driven, and interested in worthy things like the Model UN, yet the poor kid is stuck with such shits for parents--stuck between Don, who's all id, and Betty, who's solely focused on the superficial aspects of what other affluent people think. She tells the woman at the prep school that it's so hard for a girl in that time period to navigate her way in the world. And that difficulty can only be exacerbated if Don Draper and Betty Francis are your parents. Those girls she meets at the school won't be any help to her either. I'd love to see a Mad Men sequel focused on Sally in the seventies, dealing with life as an adult having to cart around the baggage of her upbringing.
A few more quick thoughts:
--We finally got more info on Bob Benson. Pete is so slimy, but it will be interesting to see how this scenario plays out;
--Poor Ken Cosgrove. The last couple of episodes he's been featured in always start out with me thinking we have to be inside a nightmare of his, but it's just the crazy Chrysler guys. Jeez! "I hate cars. I hate guns." He gives up the account and is happy he's going to be a father. I love Ken Cosgrove.
--This episode didn't have a lot of humor in it, but watching Don act out the baby in Peggy's commercial was hysterical!
Saturday, June 29, 2013
The Political Is Personal
Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Eleven, "Favors"
I've been out of the country for a few weeks, without access to the last three episodes of this season. I'd thought about watching all three--now that I'm back--and writing one entry on the last quarter of the season as a whole, but this was a rich episode, so I'd like to work through it a bit on its own, before I move on to watching the last two:
The feminist movement of the Sixties adopted the mantra "the personal is political." It captured the budding awareness of increasing numbers of women that many of the indignities, dissatisfactions, injustices, and thwarted aspirations of their personal lives weren't only a series of individual circumstances, but had as their source a political structure and ideology (patriarchy) and were shared by scores of other women with whom they could form a political community of resistance. On the flip side, many of the Mad Men characters of this episode--like some of their real-world, privileged counterparts--could have been chanting "The Political Is Personal," turning a political problem--an unjust war and the government's means of recruiting soldiers for it--into a crisis only when it threatens to touch one of their own. Of course, it is all complicated. War is both profoundly personal for those who fight it, and political for those who seek to achieve their goals through it and for countries whose citizens' fervor and nationalism are stoked by it. It can bind peoples and communities together while also tearing them apart--and the same for the units and soldiers on the ground. As a mother of two sons, I'm not unsympathetic to Sylvia's fears and tears. I get why even the GM men don't want their sons and grandsons sent to Vietnam, even though they also see draftees resisting and it makes them "sick." What's so frustrating is seeing these people, who possess--in Pierre Bourdieu's terms--much economic, social, and cultural capital, exhibit a willingness to use it only to save their own youth from being sent into harm's way.
I find this to be most frustrating when it comes to Don. He has shown anti-war sensibilities at various points in the show, presumably stemming from his own experiences in Korea. Years ago, he stopped his father-in-law from blithely sharing a WWI German soldier's helmet with Bobby, wanting Bobby to realize the gravity of that soldier's death. He's expressed his aversion to the war in Vietnam a few times this season and was insightful and spot-on in some of his comments in this episode--stressing to Arnold that 18-year olds' lack of awareness of their own and others' mortality is "why they make good soldiers" and, when Arnold goes on about the importance of "service," flatly stating that "The war is wrong." He's clearly doing as much as he does to help Mitchell because of his feelings for Sylvia. Yet, while the relationship of anti-war protesters to changes in policy was not one of easy correspondences, Don accepts his powerlessness way too easily. This is the man who got a full-page anti-tobacco companies letter published in the New York Times. Alright, that was for self-interested business motives, but still, he did it. This is the man who made people cry over a Kodak Carousel, who poignantly expressed existential angst in a travel ad. And I'm supposed to believe he couldn't do something to lend his creative voice to the attempts to persuade people that fighting this war is wrong? I know. I know. That would be a different Don Draper and a different television show, but still...
All of that said, Mad Men does typically opt for the personal over the political and this episode's best moments were closely-shot intimate exchanges: Peggy and Pete drunkenly laughing together in the diner when Ted's gone to call his wife; they share a look when Peggy admits that she does know him that was touching (but please don't go back to him, Peggy); Ted offering his back to his son as his put-upon wife sleeps on the bed, her book lying open on her chest; Bob Benson (Tom and Lorenzo were right about him being gay) and his earnest plea to Pete to recognize that "When there's true love, it doesn't matter who it is." (But, coming on to Pete? Why him? Mrs. Campbell is horrid to tell her son that he's "always been unloveable," but I feel the same way about him); Don on the phone with Sylvia, close to tears as he asks her, "You didn't feel anything?" Yet much of the vital relating of our main characters happened through barriers. Doors and the need for keys featured prominently in this episode. Characters choose blindness to political forces, but meaningful personal connections so frequently slip away from them too. Peggy's and Pete's intimacy is only facilitated by alcohol; Ted forges a small connection with his sons that his wife urges on him, but his back is turned to her and she sleeps through it; Bob gives a sad-to-watch look at Pete when Pete refers to Manolo as a "degenerate," but forges ahead with his advance despite this wall; Don and Sylvia have a genuine conversation only on the phone. When together, we only see them as Sally does--carelessly having a hurried, half-dressed sexual encounter with the door open.
Poor Sally. While Pete Campbell is completely grossed-out at merely the THOUGHT of his mother having a sexual relationship with someone and tells Peggy that he doesn't even want to think about her brushing her teeth, Sally has to see her father in the middle of sex with their neighbor, like she saw her step-grandmother and Roger together last year. She starts out the episode expressing her idealized version of Don to her mother (probably in part just to piss her mother off) and ends it realizing that--like the GM rep declares about draft-dodgers--he makes her "sick." Don's lame attempt to talk to her (admittedly a really difficult talk to have) occurs just through her closed bedroom door. Like I remember her doing once before with Don when he called her to explain something, she brushes him off with "okay." But, as she lies face down on her bed, crying, and Don stumbles down the hall to his own room, closing the door and closing himself off from everyone, things are clearly not okay. Not for the war in Vietnam and not for the war that Don keeps waging with and within himself.
Though, on the up side, Peggy got a cat instead of a boyfriend to deal with her rat problem. Good move on her part. Keep the cat; avoid thoughts of being with Pete and Ted--and Stan.
I've been out of the country for a few weeks, without access to the last three episodes of this season. I'd thought about watching all three--now that I'm back--and writing one entry on the last quarter of the season as a whole, but this was a rich episode, so I'd like to work through it a bit on its own, before I move on to watching the last two:
The feminist movement of the Sixties adopted the mantra "the personal is political." It captured the budding awareness of increasing numbers of women that many of the indignities, dissatisfactions, injustices, and thwarted aspirations of their personal lives weren't only a series of individual circumstances, but had as their source a political structure and ideology (patriarchy) and were shared by scores of other women with whom they could form a political community of resistance. On the flip side, many of the Mad Men characters of this episode--like some of their real-world, privileged counterparts--could have been chanting "The Political Is Personal," turning a political problem--an unjust war and the government's means of recruiting soldiers for it--into a crisis only when it threatens to touch one of their own. Of course, it is all complicated. War is both profoundly personal for those who fight it, and political for those who seek to achieve their goals through it and for countries whose citizens' fervor and nationalism are stoked by it. It can bind peoples and communities together while also tearing them apart--and the same for the units and soldiers on the ground. As a mother of two sons, I'm not unsympathetic to Sylvia's fears and tears. I get why even the GM men don't want their sons and grandsons sent to Vietnam, even though they also see draftees resisting and it makes them "sick." What's so frustrating is seeing these people, who possess--in Pierre Bourdieu's terms--much economic, social, and cultural capital, exhibit a willingness to use it only to save their own youth from being sent into harm's way.
I find this to be most frustrating when it comes to Don. He has shown anti-war sensibilities at various points in the show, presumably stemming from his own experiences in Korea. Years ago, he stopped his father-in-law from blithely sharing a WWI German soldier's helmet with Bobby, wanting Bobby to realize the gravity of that soldier's death. He's expressed his aversion to the war in Vietnam a few times this season and was insightful and spot-on in some of his comments in this episode--stressing to Arnold that 18-year olds' lack of awareness of their own and others' mortality is "why they make good soldiers" and, when Arnold goes on about the importance of "service," flatly stating that "The war is wrong." He's clearly doing as much as he does to help Mitchell because of his feelings for Sylvia. Yet, while the relationship of anti-war protesters to changes in policy was not one of easy correspondences, Don accepts his powerlessness way too easily. This is the man who got a full-page anti-tobacco companies letter published in the New York Times. Alright, that was for self-interested business motives, but still, he did it. This is the man who made people cry over a Kodak Carousel, who poignantly expressed existential angst in a travel ad. And I'm supposed to believe he couldn't do something to lend his creative voice to the attempts to persuade people that fighting this war is wrong? I know. I know. That would be a different Don Draper and a different television show, but still...
All of that said, Mad Men does typically opt for the personal over the political and this episode's best moments were closely-shot intimate exchanges: Peggy and Pete drunkenly laughing together in the diner when Ted's gone to call his wife; they share a look when Peggy admits that she does know him that was touching (but please don't go back to him, Peggy); Ted offering his back to his son as his put-upon wife sleeps on the bed, her book lying open on her chest; Bob Benson (Tom and Lorenzo were right about him being gay) and his earnest plea to Pete to recognize that "When there's true love, it doesn't matter who it is." (But, coming on to Pete? Why him? Mrs. Campbell is horrid to tell her son that he's "always been unloveable," but I feel the same way about him); Don on the phone with Sylvia, close to tears as he asks her, "You didn't feel anything?" Yet much of the vital relating of our main characters happened through barriers. Doors and the need for keys featured prominently in this episode. Characters choose blindness to political forces, but meaningful personal connections so frequently slip away from them too. Peggy's and Pete's intimacy is only facilitated by alcohol; Ted forges a small connection with his sons that his wife urges on him, but his back is turned to her and she sleeps through it; Bob gives a sad-to-watch look at Pete when Pete refers to Manolo as a "degenerate," but forges ahead with his advance despite this wall; Don and Sylvia have a genuine conversation only on the phone. When together, we only see them as Sally does--carelessly having a hurried, half-dressed sexual encounter with the door open.
Poor Sally. While Pete Campbell is completely grossed-out at merely the THOUGHT of his mother having a sexual relationship with someone and tells Peggy that he doesn't even want to think about her brushing her teeth, Sally has to see her father in the middle of sex with their neighbor, like she saw her step-grandmother and Roger together last year. She starts out the episode expressing her idealized version of Don to her mother (probably in part just to piss her mother off) and ends it realizing that--like the GM rep declares about draft-dodgers--he makes her "sick." Don's lame attempt to talk to her (admittedly a really difficult talk to have) occurs just through her closed bedroom door. Like I remember her doing once before with Don when he called her to explain something, she brushes him off with "okay." But, as she lies face down on her bed, crying, and Don stumbles down the hall to his own room, closing the door and closing himself off from everyone, things are clearly not okay. Not for the war in Vietnam and not for the war that Don keeps waging with and within himself.
Though, on the up side, Peggy got a cat instead of a boyfriend to deal with her rat problem. Good move on her part. Keep the cat; avoid thoughts of being with Pete and Ted--and Stan.
Monday, June 3, 2013
The Whole World Is Watching
Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Ten, "A Tale of Two Cities"
I found this episode to be enjoyable, from the way it wove the Democratic convention protests throughout the script to its choice of one of my favorite '60s songs as its closer. Could there be a blunter music/image contrast than that of the uptight, constantly angry, suited Pete Campbell smoking a joint to Janis' wail? Is he finally going to learn to lighten up a bit? The imagery and music of the California party also contrasted starkly, from the upbeat "Harper Valley PTA" to drug-induced visions of death. The song offered a quick allusion to hypocrisy--hearkening back to Cutler's accusation of Ginsberg--as well as to a strong woman "socking it to" her critics and those who would hold her back (Go, Joan!), while Don's hash-powered hallucinations darkly lead us back to his season-opening Hawaiian trip and his death by water ad campaign. With the return of the Vietnam-bound soldier, offering Don's cigarette the lighter that haunted Don on his return from Hawaii, we see that Don still has a death wish. Yet the now-dead soldier tells him that even if Don were to achieve death, he wouldn't necessarily find the wholeness he seeks: when Don asks him why he didn't get his arm back upon dying, the soldier tells him, "Dying doesn't make you whole. You should see what you look like." While at the end of one of his previous trips to California, we see Don being "baptized" in the ocean, this time the trip ends with him face down in a swimming pool, miming (or seeking?) the death that he and the soldier discussed.
While Don is on his search for whatever it is he's desiring (a non-working, pregnant wife might be part of it, given the Megan vision at the party), others are--like the characters in the Dickens novel for which the episode is named--engaged in a struggle between authority-holders and revolutionaries. My favorite of these struggles is that between Pete and Joan--and for awhile Peggy--and the one between Ginsberg and Cutler (who completely affirmed my dislike of him; he's not only a dick, but apparently as useless a partner as Bert Cooper).
With the clashes between anti-war protesters and baton- and tear gas-wielding Chicago police setting the televised background of the episode, multiple sets of fighting sides were formed: the SCDP and CGC factions of the new firm with the peace-making Ted Chaough trying to bridge the divide; the younger people with their sympathy for the convention protesters against the older characters who tended to side with the police, with Don and Megan on different sides of this divide, though he did sympathize with her despair over her adopted country; the east coast and the west coast; and those who are primarily business focused against those who also worry about social justice. These were played out most forcefully in the cases of Pete v. Joan and Cutler v. Ginsberg.
I loved Joan's surprise and then delight to realize that what she at first thought was a date (why else does anyone ever set Joan up to have lunch with a businessman?) was actually a potential client meeting. Having never dealt directly with account gathering before--except having to sleep with Herb--she wasn't sure how to describe what she does; she comes up with the apt "I'm in charge of thinking of things before people know they need them." The disappointment she registers when Pete relegates her back to her typical role with the Avon man: "You'll show him around" was sad to see. She decides to go against company policy to pursue the account herself. It wasn't surprising that Pete can't abide the breaking of protocol--a "break of the fundamental rules of this business" as he pompously declares, but I was hoping for better from Peggy. She is shocked and starts arguing about how she worked her way into the role she's in, responding to Joan's taunt about Don that "I never slept with him." She deserves Joan's barb: "Congratulations. You really are just like them." She saves Joan at the end, though, with the fake phone message, prompting Ted to grant Joan the right to the account. "Possession is 9/10 of the law," he tells Pete, who whines, "only where there is no law." Pete sees his firm to be just like the streets of Chicago, but in this case, the one engaged in revolution won--for now. Yeay, Joan!
The other interesting revolt took place when Ginsberg let loose on Cutler for Cutler's lack of concern over the peace plank being voted down at the convention. His rhetoric got a bit overwrought with his charge of Cutler's "fascist boot" on his neck, but he expressed the differences between them. When Cutler, also rightly, points out the disparity between Ginsberg's politics and his acceptance of paychecks from Dow Chemical and GM, he sends Ginsberg into an angst-filled reflection on his complicity in what he sees as evil: "I'm a thug. I'm a pig. I'm part of the problem. Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Hearkening back to his initial episode admission to Peggy that he's from Mars, the outsider Holocaust orphan who feels himself from another world, says, "I can't turn off the transmissions to do harm. They're beaming them right into my head." I feel for him. He seems the best illustration of the culture's clashes at this point in time. And a genuinely well-meaning, questing character.
I found this episode to be enjoyable, from the way it wove the Democratic convention protests throughout the script to its choice of one of my favorite '60s songs as its closer. Could there be a blunter music/image contrast than that of the uptight, constantly angry, suited Pete Campbell smoking a joint to Janis' wail? Is he finally going to learn to lighten up a bit? The imagery and music of the California party also contrasted starkly, from the upbeat "Harper Valley PTA" to drug-induced visions of death. The song offered a quick allusion to hypocrisy--hearkening back to Cutler's accusation of Ginsberg--as well as to a strong woman "socking it to" her critics and those who would hold her back (Go, Joan!), while Don's hash-powered hallucinations darkly lead us back to his season-opening Hawaiian trip and his death by water ad campaign. With the return of the Vietnam-bound soldier, offering Don's cigarette the lighter that haunted Don on his return from Hawaii, we see that Don still has a death wish. Yet the now-dead soldier tells him that even if Don were to achieve death, he wouldn't necessarily find the wholeness he seeks: when Don asks him why he didn't get his arm back upon dying, the soldier tells him, "Dying doesn't make you whole. You should see what you look like." While at the end of one of his previous trips to California, we see Don being "baptized" in the ocean, this time the trip ends with him face down in a swimming pool, miming (or seeking?) the death that he and the soldier discussed.
While Don is on his search for whatever it is he's desiring (a non-working, pregnant wife might be part of it, given the Megan vision at the party), others are--like the characters in the Dickens novel for which the episode is named--engaged in a struggle between authority-holders and revolutionaries. My favorite of these struggles is that between Pete and Joan--and for awhile Peggy--and the one between Ginsberg and Cutler (who completely affirmed my dislike of him; he's not only a dick, but apparently as useless a partner as Bert Cooper).
With the clashes between anti-war protesters and baton- and tear gas-wielding Chicago police setting the televised background of the episode, multiple sets of fighting sides were formed: the SCDP and CGC factions of the new firm with the peace-making Ted Chaough trying to bridge the divide; the younger people with their sympathy for the convention protesters against the older characters who tended to side with the police, with Don and Megan on different sides of this divide, though he did sympathize with her despair over her adopted country; the east coast and the west coast; and those who are primarily business focused against those who also worry about social justice. These were played out most forcefully in the cases of Pete v. Joan and Cutler v. Ginsberg.
I loved Joan's surprise and then delight to realize that what she at first thought was a date (why else does anyone ever set Joan up to have lunch with a businessman?) was actually a potential client meeting. Having never dealt directly with account gathering before--except having to sleep with Herb--she wasn't sure how to describe what she does; she comes up with the apt "I'm in charge of thinking of things before people know they need them." The disappointment she registers when Pete relegates her back to her typical role with the Avon man: "You'll show him around" was sad to see. She decides to go against company policy to pursue the account herself. It wasn't surprising that Pete can't abide the breaking of protocol--a "break of the fundamental rules of this business" as he pompously declares, but I was hoping for better from Peggy. She is shocked and starts arguing about how she worked her way into the role she's in, responding to Joan's taunt about Don that "I never slept with him." She deserves Joan's barb: "Congratulations. You really are just like them." She saves Joan at the end, though, with the fake phone message, prompting Ted to grant Joan the right to the account. "Possession is 9/10 of the law," he tells Pete, who whines, "only where there is no law." Pete sees his firm to be just like the streets of Chicago, but in this case, the one engaged in revolution won--for now. Yeay, Joan!
The other interesting revolt took place when Ginsberg let loose on Cutler for Cutler's lack of concern over the peace plank being voted down at the convention. His rhetoric got a bit overwrought with his charge of Cutler's "fascist boot" on his neck, but he expressed the differences between them. When Cutler, also rightly, points out the disparity between Ginsberg's politics and his acceptance of paychecks from Dow Chemical and GM, he sends Ginsberg into an angst-filled reflection on his complicity in what he sees as evil: "I'm a thug. I'm a pig. I'm part of the problem. Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." Hearkening back to his initial episode admission to Peggy that he's from Mars, the outsider Holocaust orphan who feels himself from another world, says, "I can't turn off the transmissions to do harm. They're beaming them right into my head." I feel for him. He seems the best illustration of the culture's clashes at this point in time. And a genuinely well-meaning, questing character.
Monday, May 27, 2013
"You'll Always Be a Part of Me"
Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Nine, "The Better Half"
This show has always been cynical, highlighting--week in and week out--the worst aspects of the '60s: thoughtless sexual behavior; overuse and abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; the crass materialism of the post-war economic boom; rampant sexism and sexual harrassment; racism; violence; and--though I know many viewers love them--some god-awful, tacky clothing and home decor. The noble aspects of the decade--like the Civil Rights Movement, the women's movement, the anti-poverty agenda--are either represented mainly through tragedy: the killings of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, or not represented at all. National leaders like King and Kennedy are shown to be worthy, but characters in the show who adopt Left principles represent the worst of Leftist movements (think the poser Paul Kinsey or Abe, who could only spout the us v. them, black/white thinking that some on the Left took on). The writers have hinted that the cynicism might be tied to the ad industry on which they focus. At one point early in their relationship, Megan complains to Don that everyone at SCDP is "so cynical." The focus of the show is on privileged, affluent people, whose issues are different than those on which '60s social movements worked. And, the '60s certainly did have its darker sides as well as its brighter sides. Of late, though, the series seemed even to give up hope that individual humans could change for the better. Part of Don Draper's appeal--through all of the ugliness, cruelty, and thoughtlessness he inflicts on others and the darkness to which his psyche subjects his own self--is that he seemed to have better angels dwelling with the demons. As a self-made man with an invented identity, he appeared to have the potential to re-make himself into a better person. And as someone dashingly handsome, yet brooding, moody, attempting at the same time both to protect and yet leak his own deep secret, he has always wielded the attraction that Byronic heroes have held for two hundred years. But, this season has shown him doing nothing but exhibit the same old behaviors again and again. His wish to Sylvia was that he could 'stop doing this,' but he demonstrates no capacity for learning from his mistakes or his past. It got to the point for me that the show was not just too cynical, but boring. This week's episode focused on some characters' searches for "the better half" of their selves. Given Mad Men's history of deep cynicism and characters' past histories of being unable to learn, I'm not holding my breath. But, it did make for a refreshing hour of television.
We briefly see a return of Duck in his new career as head hunter. His job now is to help people find better professional places to be. He tells Pete Campbell that he had to become aware of the "wellspring of [his]confidence--[his] family." While Pete admits that his family is a "constant distraction," Don and Roger (two of the show's lost souls) decide that this might be a good time to embark on a quest for family. Peggy too--as she's been doing for awhile--is trying to figure out with whom she belongs--Abe? Stan? Ted? None of these men are good options for her. Ted might not be a bad choice, but alas, he's married and for now, at least, isn't willing to be unfaithful. There were some lovely, sweet moments to this episode: watching Roger play with his young grandson (did I miss mention of Margaret giving birth? He seemed to appear a full-sized pre-schooler out of nowhere), Bobby's excitement at having both of his parents together with him at camp as all three of them sat at the table singing "Father Abraham." Yet the problem for Roger, Don, and Peggy as they search for their "better halves" is that they continue to look for what will fulfill them outside themselves, rather than within.
As we saw reinforced last week, Don is on a psychic quest for a mother, yet none of the women with whom he has relationships is willing to play that role for long. So, he quickly becomes dissatisfied with a wife or a lover and starts looking on the other side of the fence. Tonight he comes full circle back to Betty. I enjoyed the scenes between Don and Betty. While I suspect Betty--in large part--did what she did to see what it's like to be Don's 'other woman' for a change and to stick it to Megan, these two characters, when at their best with each other, have always been good. While Betty's manipulative half is never far below the surface, she seemed to be happy with Don there and Don has always been a gentle lover with Betty. Betty seemed more wise tonight too. Her observations about Don were spot-on. She recognizes that he can look at her one way after sex, but "then I see a decline." And of Megan: "She doesn't know that loving you is the worst way of getting to you." Don wonders, "Why is sex the definition of being close to someone?" and recognizes that "it doesn't mean anything to me," but he seems unable to connect those insights to his youthful past that we were shown last week. While I expect Betty enjoyed witnessing Don's hurt when he found her at breakfast with Henry the next morning, she's right not to want to go back to Don. He's too damaged. (Though Henry's possessive prying about his colleague when he and Betty were in the car was distasteful. Stuart's approach to Betty while Betty was waiting for Henry was quite reminiscent of Henry's first approach to a pregnant Betty while she was waiting outside a restroom). Don does return to Megan with an acknowledgement that he hasn't been present and an implicit promise that he'll try to do better, but we've seen this before. I'll believe he's genuinely working on himself when I see it.
Roger, this week at least, is not looking for his "better half" in a woman, but in a relationship with one of his offspring. He seems happy when playing with Margaret's son and after Margaret's reaction to the boy's "Planet of the Apes" nightmares (an over-reaction or one borne out of Roger's past behavior with the boy?), he moves on to try to see his child with Joan. He plaintively tells Joan, "I just want to be around." She wisely responds, "I know you want to. But I can't count on that." With Betty, she seems to be one of the few content people this week. Is that because of the presence of Bob Benson? Are they now lovers or still just friends? He seems to be a good guy, and perhaps it's just my cynicism, but I don't fully trust him. Or maybe it's that we don't know enough about him and what his motives are. He seems TOO nice in contrast to everyone else there.
Finally, there's Peggy. She, too, is looking for her better half outside herself. I'm glad that she and Abe are finally through, though I wish she had been able to take control of ending the relationship. From the moment he derided her appeal for women's rights, I haven't thought him good for her. He has some noble instincts, but is such a dichotomous thinker that it does blind him to a lot of what's going on. He is hyperbolic, of course, in his naming of Peggy as "the enemy," but he's right in seeing that they're not a good match. Her turn to Ted Chaough at this point, though, is not healthy. He's too perky in his "It's Monday morning!" "You'll find someone else and whoever he is, he'll be lucky to have you" speech, but he's right. The final shot of her, though, looking pale and unkempt with no make-up and her hair not done, doesn't portend good things for her character in the near future. I wish that she, too, would be able to look inside herself to figure out what she wants and needs--rather than hopping from man to man for the answers.
As the song goes, "You'll always be a part of me..." Betty will always be a part of Don; Margaret and her son, Joan and Kevin will always be a part of Roger; Abe and Ted--and Pete, for that matter--will always be a part of Peggy. But, if Don and Roger and Peggy are ever to be content and wise, like Joan seems to be, they will need to find the part of themselves that is their own self. And not always look for it in someone else. I don't know, though, that "Mad Men" can ever shed enough of its cynicism to allow that to happen.
This show has always been cynical, highlighting--week in and week out--the worst aspects of the '60s: thoughtless sexual behavior; overuse and abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; the crass materialism of the post-war economic boom; rampant sexism and sexual harrassment; racism; violence; and--though I know many viewers love them--some god-awful, tacky clothing and home decor. The noble aspects of the decade--like the Civil Rights Movement, the women's movement, the anti-poverty agenda--are either represented mainly through tragedy: the killings of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, or not represented at all. National leaders like King and Kennedy are shown to be worthy, but characters in the show who adopt Left principles represent the worst of Leftist movements (think the poser Paul Kinsey or Abe, who could only spout the us v. them, black/white thinking that some on the Left took on). The writers have hinted that the cynicism might be tied to the ad industry on which they focus. At one point early in their relationship, Megan complains to Don that everyone at SCDP is "so cynical." The focus of the show is on privileged, affluent people, whose issues are different than those on which '60s social movements worked. And, the '60s certainly did have its darker sides as well as its brighter sides. Of late, though, the series seemed even to give up hope that individual humans could change for the better. Part of Don Draper's appeal--through all of the ugliness, cruelty, and thoughtlessness he inflicts on others and the darkness to which his psyche subjects his own self--is that he seemed to have better angels dwelling with the demons. As a self-made man with an invented identity, he appeared to have the potential to re-make himself into a better person. And as someone dashingly handsome, yet brooding, moody, attempting at the same time both to protect and yet leak his own deep secret, he has always wielded the attraction that Byronic heroes have held for two hundred years. But, this season has shown him doing nothing but exhibit the same old behaviors again and again. His wish to Sylvia was that he could 'stop doing this,' but he demonstrates no capacity for learning from his mistakes or his past. It got to the point for me that the show was not just too cynical, but boring. This week's episode focused on some characters' searches for "the better half" of their selves. Given Mad Men's history of deep cynicism and characters' past histories of being unable to learn, I'm not holding my breath. But, it did make for a refreshing hour of television.
We briefly see a return of Duck in his new career as head hunter. His job now is to help people find better professional places to be. He tells Pete Campbell that he had to become aware of the "wellspring of [his]confidence--[his] family." While Pete admits that his family is a "constant distraction," Don and Roger (two of the show's lost souls) decide that this might be a good time to embark on a quest for family. Peggy too--as she's been doing for awhile--is trying to figure out with whom she belongs--Abe? Stan? Ted? None of these men are good options for her. Ted might not be a bad choice, but alas, he's married and for now, at least, isn't willing to be unfaithful. There were some lovely, sweet moments to this episode: watching Roger play with his young grandson (did I miss mention of Margaret giving birth? He seemed to appear a full-sized pre-schooler out of nowhere), Bobby's excitement at having both of his parents together with him at camp as all three of them sat at the table singing "Father Abraham." Yet the problem for Roger, Don, and Peggy as they search for their "better halves" is that they continue to look for what will fulfill them outside themselves, rather than within.
As we saw reinforced last week, Don is on a psychic quest for a mother, yet none of the women with whom he has relationships is willing to play that role for long. So, he quickly becomes dissatisfied with a wife or a lover and starts looking on the other side of the fence. Tonight he comes full circle back to Betty. I enjoyed the scenes between Don and Betty. While I suspect Betty--in large part--did what she did to see what it's like to be Don's 'other woman' for a change and to stick it to Megan, these two characters, when at their best with each other, have always been good. While Betty's manipulative half is never far below the surface, she seemed to be happy with Don there and Don has always been a gentle lover with Betty. Betty seemed more wise tonight too. Her observations about Don were spot-on. She recognizes that he can look at her one way after sex, but "then I see a decline." And of Megan: "She doesn't know that loving you is the worst way of getting to you." Don wonders, "Why is sex the definition of being close to someone?" and recognizes that "it doesn't mean anything to me," but he seems unable to connect those insights to his youthful past that we were shown last week. While I expect Betty enjoyed witnessing Don's hurt when he found her at breakfast with Henry the next morning, she's right not to want to go back to Don. He's too damaged. (Though Henry's possessive prying about his colleague when he and Betty were in the car was distasteful. Stuart's approach to Betty while Betty was waiting for Henry was quite reminiscent of Henry's first approach to a pregnant Betty while she was waiting outside a restroom). Don does return to Megan with an acknowledgement that he hasn't been present and an implicit promise that he'll try to do better, but we've seen this before. I'll believe he's genuinely working on himself when I see it.
Roger, this week at least, is not looking for his "better half" in a woman, but in a relationship with one of his offspring. He seems happy when playing with Margaret's son and after Margaret's reaction to the boy's "Planet of the Apes" nightmares (an over-reaction or one borne out of Roger's past behavior with the boy?), he moves on to try to see his child with Joan. He plaintively tells Joan, "I just want to be around." She wisely responds, "I know you want to. But I can't count on that." With Betty, she seems to be one of the few content people this week. Is that because of the presence of Bob Benson? Are they now lovers or still just friends? He seems to be a good guy, and perhaps it's just my cynicism, but I don't fully trust him. Or maybe it's that we don't know enough about him and what his motives are. He seems TOO nice in contrast to everyone else there.
Finally, there's Peggy. She, too, is looking for her better half outside herself. I'm glad that she and Abe are finally through, though I wish she had been able to take control of ending the relationship. From the moment he derided her appeal for women's rights, I haven't thought him good for her. He has some noble instincts, but is such a dichotomous thinker that it does blind him to a lot of what's going on. He is hyperbolic, of course, in his naming of Peggy as "the enemy," but he's right in seeing that they're not a good match. Her turn to Ted Chaough at this point, though, is not healthy. He's too perky in his "It's Monday morning!" "You'll find someone else and whoever he is, he'll be lucky to have you" speech, but he's right. The final shot of her, though, looking pale and unkempt with no make-up and her hair not done, doesn't portend good things for her character in the near future. I wish that she, too, would be able to look inside herself to figure out what she wants and needs--rather than hopping from man to man for the answers.
As the song goes, "You'll always be a part of me..." Betty will always be a part of Don; Margaret and her son, Joan and Kevin will always be a part of Roger; Abe and Ted--and Pete, for that matter--will always be a part of Peggy. But, if Don and Roger and Peggy are ever to be content and wise, like Joan seems to be, they will need to find the part of themselves that is their own self. And not always look for it in someone else. I don't know, though, that "Mad Men" can ever shed enough of its cynicism to allow that to happen.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
He's Really Still a Kid
Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Eight, “The Crash”
This episode adopted the frenetic, fractured perspective that those on Cutler’s “energy serum” might experience. (I’ll give the creators the benefit of the doubt that it was intentional and not just lousy direction and/or editing). It’s never been more obvious that Don is on a quest for a mother. And those women to whom he turns keep letting him down. Sylvia refuses to re-start their affair—or even talk to him about it--and Peggy uses her comforting skills on Ted and Stan instead of on Don. The look on his face when he sees Peggy in Ted’s office following the news of Gleeson’s death was painful. He then flashes back to the prostitute who cares for him when he’s sick as a young teen. That woman’s actual betrayal of trust and abuse of a child is, for Don, conflated with Peggy’s perfectly appropriate behavior. Don comes to a realization that “what holds people together, what draws them—it’s a history.” And, indeed, his history wraps its powerful and ugly tentacles around him and the people who evoke in him similar emotions to those from his childhood. It’s sad and tragic, but Don’s problem is that Megan could have been talking about him when she says, “Sally seems so grown up. She’s really just a kid.” Emotionally, Sally is more mature than her father.
The “creativity boost” the doctor promised Don when giving him the shot sent him instead into a feverish repeat of—and flashback to--his illness as a youth, and into reminders of his need of a mother. The son of a prostitute, living with prostitutes, the young and ill Dick is taken into the room of one of the women at his uncle and aunt’s brothel. “Your mama don’t know how to take care of nobody,” Miss Swenson says. Don denies that his step-mother is his mother, still looking for a woman to fill that role. He’s rightfully—it turns out—distrustful of this candidate, but she does take care of him nicely for awhile. The way the story plays out makes it evident why Don has always blurred the lines between sex partners and mother figures. And why he felt so much for Joan during the Herb incident. I could see a similar disappearance through the eyes of Joan when Herb was undressing her and the eyes of Dick as Miss Swenson lay down on the bed with him. But, in Don’s drug-addled brain, the memories of this woman lead him on a quest for an old ad campaign: “Because you know what he needs” accompanies the picture of a motherly woman feeding a boy. Don—a child really—yearns for that kind of mothering; he’s frustrated that none of the women in his life will give him what he thinks he needs. He married Megan for her mothering skills with his children. He clearly hoped she would shower him with them as well. Come to find out she’s an adult who expects him to be one as well, so she’s off pursuing her own career and aims, not catering to him as much as he wants. Sylvia ceased playing his games and taking care of him. She’s being more adult. Peggy’s not buying his bullshit anymore and exhibits more concern toward Ted and Stan, and with Stan she demonstrates that she’s an adult as well: “I’ve been through loss. You can’t dampen it with drugs and sex. It won’t get you through,” she tells him when he tries to seduce her.
Don has these adult women in his life who do care for him, yet won’t mother him. And then there are the actual damaging "mothers." The episode not only shows the prostitute as a woman being maternal, yet than taking advantage of and hurting a child. The woman who breaks into the Draper home is another incarnation of this type; she pretends to be maternal, yet takes advantage of Sally and Bobby to get her own needs met. When Sally tells Don, “She said she was your mother,” Don’s look is tortured. Again. What’s a damaged man to do? While Don was more of a sympathetic character to me again this week, I don’t hold out much hope that he’ll figure this one out. He doesn’t get the contradictions in his character when he pulls something like what he pulls at the end. He’s right that “every time we get a car, this place turns into a whore house” and that that’s a bad thing. So, he tries to walk away from it, telling Ted that he can’t participate in the Chevy account except by evaluating other people’s work. Yet, the man can’t avoid the history that binds him to prostitutes and to bad mother figures, so he searches for a mother, treats most women as whores, and re-creates the whole cycle again. And again. And again. “Still a kid,” caught up in a messed-up drama that requires some adult (like him) to take charge.
This episode adopted the frenetic, fractured perspective that those on Cutler’s “energy serum” might experience. (I’ll give the creators the benefit of the doubt that it was intentional and not just lousy direction and/or editing). It’s never been more obvious that Don is on a quest for a mother. And those women to whom he turns keep letting him down. Sylvia refuses to re-start their affair—or even talk to him about it--and Peggy uses her comforting skills on Ted and Stan instead of on Don. The look on his face when he sees Peggy in Ted’s office following the news of Gleeson’s death was painful. He then flashes back to the prostitute who cares for him when he’s sick as a young teen. That woman’s actual betrayal of trust and abuse of a child is, for Don, conflated with Peggy’s perfectly appropriate behavior. Don comes to a realization that “what holds people together, what draws them—it’s a history.” And, indeed, his history wraps its powerful and ugly tentacles around him and the people who evoke in him similar emotions to those from his childhood. It’s sad and tragic, but Don’s problem is that Megan could have been talking about him when she says, “Sally seems so grown up. She’s really just a kid.” Emotionally, Sally is more mature than her father.
The “creativity boost” the doctor promised Don when giving him the shot sent him instead into a feverish repeat of—and flashback to--his illness as a youth, and into reminders of his need of a mother. The son of a prostitute, living with prostitutes, the young and ill Dick is taken into the room of one of the women at his uncle and aunt’s brothel. “Your mama don’t know how to take care of nobody,” Miss Swenson says. Don denies that his step-mother is his mother, still looking for a woman to fill that role. He’s rightfully—it turns out—distrustful of this candidate, but she does take care of him nicely for awhile. The way the story plays out makes it evident why Don has always blurred the lines between sex partners and mother figures. And why he felt so much for Joan during the Herb incident. I could see a similar disappearance through the eyes of Joan when Herb was undressing her and the eyes of Dick as Miss Swenson lay down on the bed with him. But, in Don’s drug-addled brain, the memories of this woman lead him on a quest for an old ad campaign: “Because you know what he needs” accompanies the picture of a motherly woman feeding a boy. Don—a child really—yearns for that kind of mothering; he’s frustrated that none of the women in his life will give him what he thinks he needs. He married Megan for her mothering skills with his children. He clearly hoped she would shower him with them as well. Come to find out she’s an adult who expects him to be one as well, so she’s off pursuing her own career and aims, not catering to him as much as he wants. Sylvia ceased playing his games and taking care of him. She’s being more adult. Peggy’s not buying his bullshit anymore and exhibits more concern toward Ted and Stan, and with Stan she demonstrates that she’s an adult as well: “I’ve been through loss. You can’t dampen it with drugs and sex. It won’t get you through,” she tells him when he tries to seduce her.
Don has these adult women in his life who do care for him, yet won’t mother him. And then there are the actual damaging "mothers." The episode not only shows the prostitute as a woman being maternal, yet than taking advantage of and hurting a child. The woman who breaks into the Draper home is another incarnation of this type; she pretends to be maternal, yet takes advantage of Sally and Bobby to get her own needs met. When Sally tells Don, “She said she was your mother,” Don’s look is tortured. Again. What’s a damaged man to do? While Don was more of a sympathetic character to me again this week, I don’t hold out much hope that he’ll figure this one out. He doesn’t get the contradictions in his character when he pulls something like what he pulls at the end. He’s right that “every time we get a car, this place turns into a whore house” and that that’s a bad thing. So, he tries to walk away from it, telling Ted that he can’t participate in the Chevy account except by evaluating other people’s work. Yet, the man can’t avoid the history that binds him to prostitutes and to bad mother figures, so he searches for a mother, treats most women as whores, and re-creates the whole cycle again. And again. And again. “Still a kid,” caught up in a messed-up drama that requires some adult (like him) to take charge.
Monday, May 13, 2013
Welcome to the Inferno--It's So Groovy
Mad Men, Season Six, Episode Seven, "Man with a Plan"
Well, if this episode was designed to make me feel like people in June, 1968 might have felt at the center of the chaos and senselessness raging on or oozing out as the darkness was descending or the culture was descending into darkness against a soundtrack of "I Think It's So Groovy," so that everyone screams out a collective "What the fuck?!" then the episode worked. Is Matthew Weiner a man with that precise a plan? I don't know. At least I can say--after my complaints in the last post about the sexism being really boring--that they seem to have had a plan to shake that up as they document Don descending deeper into "The Inferno" he started out the season reading. (I'm not sure which rung of Dante's Hell he's on right now. Is this Violence--the Seventh of Nine?) I really don't want anything to do with Don anymore, though. Yes, I get that he's one seriously messed up man; that he had such a chaotic childhood that he wants always to be in control and so when things start to feel like they're getting away from him--say, when he impetuously decides to merge his company with another and it's all a big mess--that that's when he wants to start playing control games with people; I get that he was conceived, born into, and raised in a culture that despised him but that despised women even more and so he never saw--growing up with his father and step-mother and then in a brothel--what a healthy, respectful, loving male/female relationship might look like and that he just acts out what he knows; I get that he has a fear of abandonment and so pushes and pushes women to abandon him and prove to him again that he really is worthless. But, the time I have to spend inside that man's head and reality to get to that understanding just keeps getting more and more disturbing. I get that Sylvia was a willing--if an increasingly bemused--participant in the whole "game" and I liked that she resisted parts of it, refusing to crawl around like a dog as Megan has done for Don, telling him "I can talk about whatever I want!" But, the deep misogyny he reveals is neither entertaining nor thought-provoking to watch. It's just incredibly creepy. "Why would you think you're going anywhere? You are for me. You exist in this room for my pleasure." And later, "Who told you were allowed to think?" I've never liked Sylvia, but found myself feeling some respect for her that she was able to recognize how twisted they were getting, realizing it was time for her to get back to herself: "It's time to really go home." She refuses to play along with his "It's over when I say it's over." She tells him she's ashamed. He's just sad and reveals how much he needs her with his pleading "Please." I expect that's supposed to draw us back into his camp since he's a hurt puppy again, but as far as I'm concerned he's a hurt puppy who needs some serious help and until he gets it, I'd rather not get dragged into his world and his hell.
Which leads to poor Mrs. Campbell, who, because of her apparent dementia--her hell, is being dragged into the nasty worlds of her sons. As I recall from past seasons, she wasn't the warmest of mothers to Pete, so I'm sure some of his resentment toward her is justified, but as usual, Pete is able to take unpleasantness further than most. He's insecure about his job, reading some deep symbolism into the shortage of chairs in the conference room during the first joint partners meeting, and so spreads the sunshine as far as he can. "My mother can go to hell. Ted Chaough can fly her there!" he yells at his secretary. Don also seems insecure about the relatively more sensitive Ted's flying ability. When they're on their way upstate in Ted's plane, talking about the presentation to the margarine men, Don whines, "Does it matter? No matter what I say, you're the guy who flew us up here in his own plane." We still don't know enough about Chaough, but it would be really pleasant to discover that there's a partner to be had who is a much more decent guy. His visit to his dying partner, his desire to get to know the new creative team, his lack of ability to hold his liquor, the fact that--as we found out last week--people keep calling him 'nice,' his aversion to Nixon on the grounds of wanting to feel hope all suggest that there might be more decency in him than we're used to seeing in men on the show. I love Peggy's line to Don: "When you told me about the merger, I hoped he'd rub off on you and not the other way around." Gleeson gives him the best advice to "just walk back in there like you own half the place."
It was nice to see Peggy and Joan together again. I hope Joan was sincere when she told Peggy, "I'm glad you're here." The show could use some positive woman energy about now. After all the joint firms wrangling over splitting accounts, sharing the load of who gets fired, etc. they could have been setting Joan up to be the partner with cancer to counter CGC's partner with a terminal disease, but fortunately, that's not the case. I don't know what purpose that whole ovarian cyst served other than to raise that possibility and to hoist Bob Benson into a role where he's now in Joan's debt. What will develop with him?
But, finally the episode's title begs the question as to who the 'man with a plan' is. The partners of the two merging firms seem not to have a plan, but to be making it up as they go. Bert Cooper doesn't even have his full welcoming speech on hand. Don concocts a really nasty plan to make Sylvia demonstrate just how much she needs him and "nothing else will do," but is lost when she finally calls him on it. Pete and his brother have no plan for their mother. Though Pete yells to his brother that "she should be locked up," he basically just runs home when called to put out each fire--or roomful of smoke. Perhaps it's just Sen. Kennedy who had a plan--to be elected president, attempt to end the war in Vietnam and work to improve the lives of impoverished families. Yet, in the mad, chaotic world of 1968, such a plan could not be fulfilled. And, it's the confused Mrs. Campbell who sounds the alarm that sets their world into deeper confusion again--just two months after the last assassination.
Well, if this episode was designed to make me feel like people in June, 1968 might have felt at the center of the chaos and senselessness raging on or oozing out as the darkness was descending or the culture was descending into darkness against a soundtrack of "I Think It's So Groovy," so that everyone screams out a collective "What the fuck?!" then the episode worked. Is Matthew Weiner a man with that precise a plan? I don't know. At least I can say--after my complaints in the last post about the sexism being really boring--that they seem to have had a plan to shake that up as they document Don descending deeper into "The Inferno" he started out the season reading. (I'm not sure which rung of Dante's Hell he's on right now. Is this Violence--the Seventh of Nine?) I really don't want anything to do with Don anymore, though. Yes, I get that he's one seriously messed up man; that he had such a chaotic childhood that he wants always to be in control and so when things start to feel like they're getting away from him--say, when he impetuously decides to merge his company with another and it's all a big mess--that that's when he wants to start playing control games with people; I get that he was conceived, born into, and raised in a culture that despised him but that despised women even more and so he never saw--growing up with his father and step-mother and then in a brothel--what a healthy, respectful, loving male/female relationship might look like and that he just acts out what he knows; I get that he has a fear of abandonment and so pushes and pushes women to abandon him and prove to him again that he really is worthless. But, the time I have to spend inside that man's head and reality to get to that understanding just keeps getting more and more disturbing. I get that Sylvia was a willing--if an increasingly bemused--participant in the whole "game" and I liked that she resisted parts of it, refusing to crawl around like a dog as Megan has done for Don, telling him "I can talk about whatever I want!" But, the deep misogyny he reveals is neither entertaining nor thought-provoking to watch. It's just incredibly creepy. "Why would you think you're going anywhere? You are for me. You exist in this room for my pleasure." And later, "Who told you were allowed to think?" I've never liked Sylvia, but found myself feeling some respect for her that she was able to recognize how twisted they were getting, realizing it was time for her to get back to herself: "It's time to really go home." She refuses to play along with his "It's over when I say it's over." She tells him she's ashamed. He's just sad and reveals how much he needs her with his pleading "Please." I expect that's supposed to draw us back into his camp since he's a hurt puppy again, but as far as I'm concerned he's a hurt puppy who needs some serious help and until he gets it, I'd rather not get dragged into his world and his hell.
Which leads to poor Mrs. Campbell, who, because of her apparent dementia--her hell, is being dragged into the nasty worlds of her sons. As I recall from past seasons, she wasn't the warmest of mothers to Pete, so I'm sure some of his resentment toward her is justified, but as usual, Pete is able to take unpleasantness further than most. He's insecure about his job, reading some deep symbolism into the shortage of chairs in the conference room during the first joint partners meeting, and so spreads the sunshine as far as he can. "My mother can go to hell. Ted Chaough can fly her there!" he yells at his secretary. Don also seems insecure about the relatively more sensitive Ted's flying ability. When they're on their way upstate in Ted's plane, talking about the presentation to the margarine men, Don whines, "Does it matter? No matter what I say, you're the guy who flew us up here in his own plane." We still don't know enough about Chaough, but it would be really pleasant to discover that there's a partner to be had who is a much more decent guy. His visit to his dying partner, his desire to get to know the new creative team, his lack of ability to hold his liquor, the fact that--as we found out last week--people keep calling him 'nice,' his aversion to Nixon on the grounds of wanting to feel hope all suggest that there might be more decency in him than we're used to seeing in men on the show. I love Peggy's line to Don: "When you told me about the merger, I hoped he'd rub off on you and not the other way around." Gleeson gives him the best advice to "just walk back in there like you own half the place."
It was nice to see Peggy and Joan together again. I hope Joan was sincere when she told Peggy, "I'm glad you're here." The show could use some positive woman energy about now. After all the joint firms wrangling over splitting accounts, sharing the load of who gets fired, etc. they could have been setting Joan up to be the partner with cancer to counter CGC's partner with a terminal disease, but fortunately, that's not the case. I don't know what purpose that whole ovarian cyst served other than to raise that possibility and to hoist Bob Benson into a role where he's now in Joan's debt. What will develop with him?
But, finally the episode's title begs the question as to who the 'man with a plan' is. The partners of the two merging firms seem not to have a plan, but to be making it up as they go. Bert Cooper doesn't even have his full welcoming speech on hand. Don concocts a really nasty plan to make Sylvia demonstrate just how much she needs him and "nothing else will do," but is lost when she finally calls him on it. Pete and his brother have no plan for their mother. Though Pete yells to his brother that "she should be locked up," he basically just runs home when called to put out each fire--or roomful of smoke. Perhaps it's just Sen. Kennedy who had a plan--to be elected president, attempt to end the war in Vietnam and work to improve the lives of impoverished families. Yet, in the mad, chaotic world of 1968, such a plan could not be fulfilled. And, it's the confused Mrs. Campbell who sounds the alarm that sets their world into deeper confusion again--just two months after the last assassination.
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