In Which We Try To Catch The Deluge In A Paper Cup

Two By Two

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

When the news breaks that Dr. Martin Luther King has been assassinated, we're sitting in a room full of white people listening to Paul Newman give a speech. Shock reverberates; it's a moment not unlike the one in a much earlier installment, when JFK was shot. Suddenly everybody is a neighbor. Everyone wants to make a call. Megan is up for an award for her writing on Heinz Beans, but the relevancy of an award show, not to mention the defunct Heinz account, is quickly lost in the fray.

I didn't hear at first who had been killed. This added to the mayhem of the moment, and I was just as quick to respond in worry as this room full of people. Nobody cares who died or what happened, what matters is what is going to come of it, who else is going to have to pay, how we can prove our mettle. Destruction seems imminent. Fires break out and, like the ancient flood which gave the episode its title, they threaten to engulf the city. 

So it is murder for King, and it is softcore murder of whatever uncomfortable unity had begun to creep into offices and apartment buildings. "Negro" punctuates scenes. Other than two moments in Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and Cutler, Gleason & Chaough, we aren't privy to what any of the black characters are thinking or feeling. They are marginalized, either as the perpetrators of violence in their neighborhoods, looters and rioters, or as objects of pity.

When Joan puts her arms around Dawn and says, "I'm so sorry", it is deeply patronizing: what will you do now that you've lost your messiah? Compared to the compassionate hug between Peggy and her secretary, which happens just moments before, it creates more division than the street blocks separating downtown from the riots. Fear, pity and guilt are not the biggest feelings. They are not the only ones we are capable of experiencing, but they are the most difficult to sidestep. They sell. 

Critiquing, perhaps, the past weeks' media frenzy over Boston or the advertising industry in general, Weiner gives both Harry Crane and an insurance salesman that Roger is trying to court for business the callousness that we have almost come to expect alongside catastrophe. Profits will soar, but at what cost? People will buy a t-shirt if you tell them part of the proceeds are going to a good cause, but what they're really doing is filling their closet with more shit. Fear, pity, guilt. 

Family was important this week, even if nobody can get along. Pete calls Trudy and offers to come spend the night, but the only thing uniting them, even in this moment, is the television blaring in his Manhattan apartment and her suburban living room. Megan may be exasperated by her father's intellectualism and Don's drinking, but it hasn't been enough to push her out on her own yet, although we're catching more and more glimpses of how successful she is becoming.

Peggy, who opens the episode dreaming of a future in a new apartment on the Upper East Side, seems surprised to learn that her live-in boyfriend Abe has imagined their future children and the "different kinds of people" he wants them to be exposed to. Don is worried about Sylvia, whose husband whisked her away to Washington D.C. for a medical conference, and whom he can't call.  

Tragedy has a way of showing us what we really want — and nobody is content, no matter how much they may talk themselves into it. Like Don's (hilarious) speech: "When you have children, you act excited, but you don't feel anything. Especially if you had a difficult childhood. You want to love them, but you don't. The fact that you're faking that feeling makes you wonder if your father had the same problem", we are made aware in this episode by the fragile presence, not the previous episodes' absence, of the things that are soon to disappear or fall apart. Megan and Don's intimacy and marriage. Don's relationship with his children (who are quickly growing into adults who know better.)  

Even Peggy, who seems so excited about new apartments and Abe, keeps making eyes at Ted Chaough. Michael Ginsburg, who doggedly refuses his father's attempts to set him up with a nice Jewish girl, reveals how nervous (excited) he is by prattling on at her in the diner about children and the fact that he's never had sex before. 

We finally got more of a glimpse of brunette Betty, whose dreams for her political husband seem to be coming true as Henry reveals that he'd like to run for state senate. "I can't wait for them to really meet you," he murmurs, and we know Henry well enough to understand that he means his supportive, charming wife, but Betty still parades in front of the mirror holding a party dress of yore against herself. These old habits are comfortable; it takes calamity to reveal how poorly they fit. 

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about Mad Men. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of our recordings about Mad Men here.

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"Harlot's Bluff" - The Weeks (mp3)

In Which We Will Not Keep These Vows

Swing

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

In a certain light, Megan's resemblance to Anne Hathaway is remarkable. Perhaps it is just that aura of unappreciated talent, the tender tears, the innocence. When Mel, the writer of her soap opera, and his wife invite Megan and Don to swing one evening over dinner, what holds the Drapers back is Don's dogged determination to prolong the pain as long as possible. If you experience something mildly unpleasant for long enough, you begin to think it's the best you've ever had. 

Take ketchup, for example. In the summer, living outdoors, you cannot imagine yourself consuming anything else but hot dog after smothered hot dog. Hibernating inside, it's another story; I'm not sure I know anyone who would partake except under duress. When you can only appreciate something in a certain context, an outside experience feels foreign, new, almost forbidden. I don't think Pete and Don would have gone for Heinz's Ketchup if it wasn't a little bit like an affair. Hell, they even conduct the initial conversation in Pete's Manhattan apartment, far from Roger's nagging and Ken's worrying. But if we learned anything from Pete's tryst-turned-sour last week, it's that the pretty visitor in your bed might have some secrets of her own. 

Much like the beginning of a tragedy, the show's central conflicts express themselves through outlying characters. If this week's ensemble was bigger than ever, it's because the weight of what's to come has to rest on everyone's shoulders. Harry's secretary Scarlett brought out a side of Joan we hadn't seen in a while when she skipped out of work early to attend a party and had Don's secretary, Dawn, punch her timecard. And here we were thinking that Joan's biggest problem was that she had to sleep with a sleazeball to make partner at SCDP. When Joan fires Scarlett and (eventually) gives Dawn additional responsibilities, we see a side of her we haven't truly seen since the very early days of the show: Joan the office manager. 

If Harry is angry at Joan because she was made partner and he wasn't, it's for the wrong reasons. He's quick to call out the dirty deed that got her to the top, but what he doesn't know about Joan is that she feels no shame in being desired. In fact, quite the contrary: a girls' night out with an old friend from out of town, Kate, proves that. If Joan is willing to do anything for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, it's because she needs to be essential; her greatest fear would be to discover that in the end, she's just a glorified secretary, as replaceable as all the other girls. 

But Harry never was very good at reading people, which is why he demands to be made partner and is actually surprised when they don't hand him the title on a silver platter. You've really got to hand it to the people who have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, by which I mean, hand them a consolation prize and show them the door.

Don and Peggy face off for ketchup, and there's no moral high ground here. Both of them sold out to be in this hotel room: Peggy betrayed Stan's confidence, and Don betrayed Heinz Baked Beans. Their pitches are doppelgangers, simple and sophisticated, but it is Peggy's that has the defining characteristic that lets the rest of the world know which is which, who is who. What makes her better than Don is her ability to capitalize on what the client actually wants without having to justify a vision. Regardless, neither SCDP nor Cutler, Gleason & Chaough win the business, and in the process, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce loses the rest of Heinz's business because of their indiscretion. 

We'll have to wait and see whether or not this exposure of infidelity presages things to come. For now, we can only celebrate as one character's honesty pays off. Like all Don's secretaries of yore, there are big things coming for Dawn, although we're not sure what. He promoted one of them and married the other, so I can only assume she will be made queen.

The council for human rights has begun investigating the advertising industry in the interest of black employees. Risky, perhaps, in an episode where Dawn and her friend have coffee (twice! in two different scenes!), the first time characters of color have been given any significant screen time or personality on Mad Men since Carla, the Drapers' maid. It's possible that Lena Dunham wrote to Matthew Weiner and shared her concerns for the future of the show. The irony is painful, but like all wounds the more you press on it the better it feels.

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about Mad Men. She twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.  

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"Beyond the Farm" - Nora Jane Struthers (mp3)

In Which We Dance With The One Who Brought Us

Catch Up

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

The devil has joined Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the form of Bob Benson (James Wolk). Last week he stood in an elevator with Don long enough to make the hairs rise on the back of my neck, and Sunday night he bought toilet paper for Pete Campbell. I'm not sure what it is about him, but anybody who seems squeaky clean and has no function in the narrative except to take notes in client meetings and make other characters raise quizzical brows in his direction is scary enough to make me run in the other direction. 

Honestly, it would not take much to give us the jitters at this point; the discomfort introduced last week only grew in this episode, garnished with two well-placed allusions to North Korea. That Mad Men evokes our contemporary struggles has been apparent from the beginning, but the distance between then and now was obliterated with Dr. Rosen's wry, "No one took Fidel Castro seriously," right before he rushed off to another surgery. It's an old trick, confronting our fears in fiction. Is learning blind better than observing a lesson and ignoring it?

Similarly, we sense that it is Bob Benson who will watch and take notes as the agency goes up in flames. I half expect to see him slinking around corners with his legal pad and pen, sitting on left shoulders and whispering in ears. He'll be an enabler, opening windows for others to jump out of, pouring that extra glass of whiskey.

Sorry for all the doom and gloom, but how could I think otherwise? Two brief flashbacks to a young Don Draper unveil a lurid fragment of his piecemeal past. That he was raised for a time in a brothel seems too simple an explanation for his relationship with women. I would be more tempted to blame it on a desire to compensate for the many awkward years he spent in homespun with a bowl haircut. Just when it was getting so easy to hate him, they throw this curveball! I had a few teary moments remembering that he watched his father and mother die, that he saw his uncle demand sex from his stepmother for rent money. Childhood is one thing that should be kept absolutely sacred. (I also cried during a Purina commercial, so let's take all of this with the requisite grain of salt.) 

Although Don told Dr. Rosen's wife, Sylvia (Linda Cardellini), that he didn't want to sleep with her anymore in the new year, their liaison only intensifies. No lost love between neighbors! If he felt any guilt before it was feigned; Sylvia's own intense shame stems from her Cathollc girlhood, and it is this part of her that Megan appeals to when she confides to Sylvia about her recent miscarriage. The irony behind Megan trying to convince Sylvia to watch her TV show isn't lost on us and certainly isn't lost on Sylvia, who's cooking up enough drama in the Draper marriage to fill an Italian opera. When both of the women in your life are at breaking point, Don, the choice is obvious: go for the one who doesn't want to have a baby. 

It's a shame about Megan, because right before we find out about her miscarriage, she's firing the maid and is incandescently hilarious about it. Let's not forget that not so long ago, Betty also resorted to firing the help when she was at her wits' end. We get the feeling that Megan won't be around for long, but that she'll remain a face on the screen, present whenever Don is hungover in his second sad bachelor pad and turns on the daytime soaps.

Affairs and betrayals continue to be at the forefront of the episode as Pete and Trudy Campbell flirt their way around their suburban neighbors. Pete is the only one who goes through with it and invites one of the blonde neighbors for a tryst in his apartment in the city. Like all of Pete's women, she's much too innocent and trusting for her own good (e.g. "I'll park my car in front of the driveway instead of in the driveway so you'll know I'm thinking about you"). When she gets pummeled by her husband, she runs to the Campbells for help. Trudy, we find, had no delusions about her husband's fidelity, but she also won't be made into a fool in front of her neighbors and throws him out, but only so far. She is determined to ruin him, but refuses to divorce him. This may have been the first time I admired Trudy Campbell, but I'm sure it won't be the last. 

At the agency, things have taken a turn for the comical; Jaguar's sleazy salesman Herb (Gary Basaraba) wants more local ads as opposed to the glittering national campaign, but Don won't give it to him; why is it that I foresee Joan paying for this obstinance? The Heinz Baked Beans client brings in his colleague, who's in charge of Ketchup, for a visit, but reveals that he doesn't want Don and the crew to do anything for Ketchup because he's got a chip in his shoulder. Stan foolishly reveals this new development to Peggy, who in turn reveals it to her boss, who in turn wants to seduce Ketchup over to Cutler, Gleason and Chaough.

I'm honestly surprised Peggy didn't see it coming, as beautifully cutthroat as she has become in this business. When her secretary reminds her that she should be kind to the writers who work under her, it's a bittersweet moment; we realize that, as much as she has come to resemble Don, she's still trying to please. 

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about Mad Men. She twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

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