Juvenile Cinephile

Mad Men

Episode #5.07 “At the Codfish Ball”

This is an episode that comes a few weeks or so after the big Megan-Don fight and let’s just say they both put it past them.  Megan’s parents have come down and the hosting couple is on their best behavior from the workplace to home right down to their rather conservative bedroom attire.  Don is trying to learn French, that the Calvets rather disrespectfully speak back and forth the moment they come in, which Megan is annoyed by. She wants Don to be himself and not try to come off pseudo-intellectual for her judgmental intellectual father who thinks Megan has settled down too early.

This is the most Megan-centric episode, obviously because we meet her family but there are still missing pieces left likely for the future and some to find in the past.  When Don and Megan had their first romantic encounter, she mentioned she came down here to follow her path as an artistic person, she stopped short on artist, mentioning she had a degree in literature and was into acting, painting, and writing.  She made it known then she was into the idea of copy-writing and advertising but was she really?  For a young woman who was making $70 a week as a secretary, I am sure any job sounded way more interesting at that point.  Was she trying to get closer to Don when she said that?  Her father seems to think that she has given up on her dreams.  But what, Dr. Calvet, what?  So vague on the ambitions.  Was it acting?  It is not like she is alone in the ambitions at the SCDP, with Ken Cosgrove having to have pseudonyms to be published and Pete being too intellectual for his own good.  Or is that Dr. Calvet will never be satisfied until she dumps her capitalist pig husband and become this generation’s Brecht?  The man cannot really be happy his Quebecois daughter raised under socialist intellectualism is not just working for the machine in the United States but also married to it.  

What helped Dr. Calvet’s case is the fact how chilled out Megan was after she helped save the Heinz account and also the pitch.  She got to celebrate with the boy’s club but had to be prodded by Peggy afterward to have any reaction at all, which is a 180 degree turn from when she and Don celebrated with office sex the moment the dinner was over.  That part of it seems to show that Megan is in a different position from anybody at the company.  She knew about the account being in danger because Mrs. Beans confided in her that it was going to happen on a wife-to-wife level.  She tells Don and she helps him work into her pitch that he is taking the credit for at the dinner table but let’s face it, Don never screwed Betty or anybody after hitting a home run pitch and he certainly didn’t do it with any copy-writer.  

Maybe that is as satisfactory as it gets for Megan by making made Don look good and really happy.  Her role as the wife and copy-writer, we expect there to be cynicism with the ‘boss’s wife’ having an idea but Peggy, Stan, and Michael just say ‘the boss’s wife’ and admit it is better than what they have and move on.  Still Megan feels the workplace is a bit too cynical, right down to Harry Crane making a re-appearance in the celebration acting like he was there with the Drapers and Cosgroves when he was making the most explicit, sexually suggestive comments about Megan in the premiere episode.  Not every guy at work is like Harry but I am sure Megan has overheard and thinks guys at work say stuff of that nature.  It is going to be pretty impossible for her to be seen as an independent copy-writer when she is married to a partner yet her relationship with Don was made and built around the workplace.  I cannot imagine her leaving for another agency or another avenue is going to go over well, especially when she proved herself as talented and creative to make a good pitch.  

Megan and Peggy are tied together because they are working women copy-writers and modern women at that.  Peggy is streets behind thanks to her devoutly Catholic upbringing but she has grown more and more open to it.  This includes co-habitating with Abe although she gave her hopes up when her original fears were of a break up until the more traditional Joan brought up the possibility of an engagement.   But I think Peggy is fine with just living together un-married.  I do not know what she was thinking inviting her mother to having dinner with Abe and give the news.  Let’s face it, Peggy’s last boyfriend had her mom on his side because she was married to the job.  Was it to get a rise out of her or that she legitimately thought her mother would be proud she got a stable relationship that does not end with her keeling over to unexpectedly have a baby?  Peggy’s tough time at work seemed to spill over into her anxieties involving her relationship with Abe.  He may not be ‘practicing’ on her, but is their relationship going to last?  He seemed to take no enjoyment from hearing the casual sexual harassment that she takes from Rizzo and Ginzo.

This is also the most Sally-centric episode of the season and we realize how easier it is for her with no mother Betty around.  Grandma Pauline breaking her ankle would make Betty go nuclear if she was there but she just calls her father’s house who has no real panic.  This may speak to his relationship with Megan with the kids.  In the premiere when Sally opens the bedroom door by accident (and at this point, the child should realize no two-door entrances lead to bathrooms) she gets a peep of Megan in a Bond Girl-esque silhouette completely naked, and I wondered if Don ruined Megan as a mother-figure for the kids. Turns out, Sally loves her.  She gets to go shopping for mod clothes (including awesome go-go boots too hot for the party) and eat food only a picky-eater 12 year-old could like.  Sally may have been the oldest to Megan’s baby in the family but she is the favorite and I cannot ignore the parallels she shares with Megan, that is mostly the parent issues.  Daddy girls who both have mothers that are a bit too touchy and volatile brats who would be more sympathetic if they were not so bratty.  At some point Megan has gotten desensitized to the fights that involve her father cheating with one of his students and making sure her mother does not flirt with her boyfriends/husband or sleep with lit cigarettes buds.  For Sally it would be at the ball for Don receiving an award from The American Cancer Society.   

Sally seeing her ‘date’ Roger Sterling (he who had a heart attack while having one-half of a twin ride on his back around the office) get orally serviced by Mrs. Calvet is one of the shocking moments on the show ever.  You expect Megan’s mother and Roger to do something intimate when they both disappear but not THAT.  Sally says no more to the Shirley Temple drink and just sits there glazed eyed.  She recovers to having a little fun with it talking to Glenn (more on him) on the phone but that was when she kinda pulls back the notion of being in an adult world.  

This episode was way more back to basics after the most experimental episode on the series but it was a fine hour of television.  Though it had to be Chinese water torture for Megan haters.  

Other Thoughts:

Fantastic little moment of Don and Megan overhearing her parents fight with Megan having to explain to Don it is a bit inappropriate to cry on the phone to your students about not getting your book published when you wife is right there.  Don still needs to learn things.  

Although what Sally saw probably ruined any future for these two, I loved the rapport between Sally and Roger.

Peggy and Joan get a scene that recalls their dishing during ‘Tomorrowland’ but there was something a bit passive aggressive with Joan suggesting Peggy go out shopping for clothes for the dinner when Pegs wore an outfit straight out of catholic school.  I want their friendship to work and be awesome but we have to remember how mean and passive aggressive Joan was with Peggy as a young secretary from the very beginning of the show.  

Mad Men got so into the zeitgeist of the Summer of 1966 that now I have lost track of when this is going on in the fall.  September?  October?  

Love the return of Mona Sterling, who still does not mind being Roger’s partner in crime once more.  In another era, maybe Mona would be working side by side with Roger.

One reason Don should have gotten off of ‘love leave’ quicker, the fact that he has become a bit of a persona non grata with his message to Lucky Strike (which ironically enough, Megan and Peggy were the only two people at the company who supported Don writing that letter) and needs to recover that.  But is he too tarnished?

Julia Ormond as Megan’s mother.  The fact that she speaks both French and English on this episode is further complicating the fact that I confuse her with Juliette Binoche a lot.

This was not a slip of the tongue:

Roger feeling so smugly introspective after his LSD trip.  Don had the best response:

And I know he is Matthew Weiner’s son but Creepy Glenn will never be un-Creepy, Mr. Weiner.  

I think Janie Bryant must feel like a kid at the candy store.  No longer dressing housewives but younger, mod young women like Megan.  

If people can still bitch about Sal and Paul Kinsey, I can bitch about the lack of Lane in this episode.  

Kiernan Shipka is perfection as Sally.  There’s a reason why she stayed over so many Bobby Drapers.  

MAD MEN

#5.06 

“Far Away Places”

The honeymoon is over.  In some ways this was foreseen the moment Don thought a trip to Howard Johnsons in Plattsburgh, as in a 5-6 hour drive from the city on a good day, was an idea for an escape.  But let’s not rush to the last act.  Let’s start from the beginning.

The episode’s structure is owed to the French New Wave auteurs of the period and their antecedents Kurosawa and Ophuls in its anthology structure.  Over a course of the day, the three main central (and most popular) characters are all connected in loose ways in reality but thematically could not be tied tighter.  It produces one of the most ambitious episodes structurally in the history of the series.  

We first get to Peggy.  She has dreaded the ‘New Don’, the guy who does not care about work and skips out on a pitch to a crucial account and client.  She has to push the pitch on her own, completely following the Heinz Guy’s idea of the pitch that is a 180 from her original pitch.  She adapts, she gives a good pitch (though I am still partial to dancing beans), and she still does not impress the Heinz Guy.  Then Peggy has a Don moment and pushes the pitch to the point she is seen as too much of a bitch and is taken off the account.  Peggy, while drunk, contemplated the fact she acts too much like a man in her work to Dawn in a previous episode.  She did in this instance and had she been male, I wonder if this pitch would have won the Heinz Guy over eventually.  She is essentially the scapegoat as the account is seen no way in jeopardy (Pete Campbell’s only appearance just has him casually tell her she is off the account).  Her gender is what gets her off the account but it is also probably why the account is still in SCDP, as the ‘shrill, bitchy female copywriter’ is disposable to the ad campaign.  So Peggy’s only real work is coming from the Mohawk Airlines pitch under Ginsberg’s name who has taken the account she took in to save the company last season in addition to being off this account.  This is not a good time for Peggy at work.

Her life with Abe is not much better.  There is a bizarre gender reversal in their argument where you almost find Abe in a vulnerable, needy position to Peggy’s white-collar 9 to 5 work position.  It was almost a classic Don-Betty fight.   She is married to her job and seeing as that marriage is in a bit of shambles, she realizes she needs to appreciate Abe’s company.  But not until she smokes pot while going to an afternoon showing of the film Born Free and gives a stranger who gave her the joint a handjob in the theater.  Again, Peggy is in a gender-reversal.  She doesn’t reciprocate the random guy coming onto her but switches the power dynamics just to know she has made somebody happy that day.  There is also the fact she finds out about Michael Ginsberg’s past.  It was assumed he at least had relatives who died in the Holocaust based on his reactions to the other copywriters eating up the photos of the Richard Speck murders.  But now we find out he possibly was born in a concentration camp, does not know his mother as she died at the camp, his father we see is not his biological father (and that is left as an open question), and he finds this fact still impossible to even reveal without just saying something as ridiculous as being from Mars.  

Last episode we saw Pete’s drive and failure to be the Don Draper facade of yore.  This episode we see not just Peggy but Michael also reveal to be more authentic Don Drapers.  This was always the case with Peggy but this episode shows the ways she can and cannot really be like Don.  Out of work, yes she can, but at work we see the limitations that start and end at her gender.  Michael is like Dick Whitman raised as a city kid down to the abandonment issues, the dark, deep secret past, and a major identity crisis.  There is obviously more explicit neuroses with Michael but now we understand why this is the case.  Plus he is brilliant, if incredibly calculating in his work much like Don Draper of yore.  People say Peggy should fear Ginsberg, their connection in that late night scene seems more of a detente if perhaps friendship, love that could never happen with her and Don.  I sense partnership that through his little revelation is possibly stronger than her work relationship with Rizzo or even her romance with Abe.  

We get to Roger who after Jane twists his arm, agrees to join her to take LSD under the supervision of her shrink and that shrink’s circle of friends.  The moment the sequence happened I was very excited but also a bit nervous how the feeling of being on LSD would be done.  For a brief moment, when Roger declared his hate for the product, I was disappointed.  Then he opened the bottle of liquor that happened to play the USSR national anthem and I actually applauded.  It got significantly weirder from there with mirror scenes, shrinking cigarettes, and Bert Cooper on US mint.  But my favorite was Roger’s bathtub scene with Jane and their bathrobe/carpet confessions to each other that this marriage does not work afterwards.  I have never liked Jane more in those scenes where she seemed to display a certain level of substance beyond sex-pot secretary.  Roger seems to take these confessions at face-value and before he goes into to work, officially declares them over as a married couple to Jane’s surprise.   

Roger seems way more chipper and not in a fake front way that he had going for him in previous episodes.  I have this feeling he is going to be taken more LSD.  Now I doubt those trips will be as fun but it is currently a product Roger needs to get by.  Not sex, booze, or even a cigarette, but LSD.  Just a theory for future episodes.  

Now we get to the Don-Megan escape to HoJos story.  We see Don briefly earlier in the episode in a bit of panic with him and Peggy having two completely different things on the brain.  For Peggy it is Heinz and with Don- we have no clue at that point.  But it is super late, he is not back home, he looks alone, and he looks like hell.  What happened up there?  

Don and Megan had a fight fit for high school couples who go to Pete’s driver’s ed. class.  It was playing hooky with Don loosely pretending to actually care about the products at Howard Johnsons, he really just wanted to be there with Megan.  Megan seems more inclined to care about the products being served to them at HoJos and once again voices her dismay to Don he took her out of work without the consideration of the fact it makes her look bad to the other copy-writers and that only he can really have ‘fun’ with work.  Don’s solution to this is treating her like a child.  She turns the tables and sarcastically eats orange sherbet ice cream to make a point of how ridiculous that is, and then it turns to both of them insulting their relationships (or lack thereof) with their mothers.  Don’s mother issues, of course, stings more, and Megan immediately wishes she could take it back.  Don, the manchild, reacts by leaving her there at HoJos.  In Plattsburgh, New York.  He left her.  By herself.  

Don immediately regrets this but she is gone too, leaving nothing but her pink sunglasses.  In a world of no telecommunication beyond landline phones, Don feels useless and drives back home after calling the apartment, Peggy, and Megan’s mother, never revealing there was a fight or that his wife could be missing (except to a State Trooper).  He finds that Megan is back home, all ready for work after taking a bus and a cab all the way back.  She honestly could have gone back home, as in back to Montreal.  It was closer and she had reasons to not go back to New York.  But Megan considers the apartment she has with Don the home, the life she has worked for.  But she locks Don out because he needs a lesson.  He breaks the door down with Don chasing her but not in a sinister way but that he desperately wants to be close to her and get her forgiveness.  It is not that easy and there is a lot of physicality and chasing around the apartment.  They both fall back on white carpet, the same area where they had their sexual conquest in the premiere episode.  Don realizes he really screwed up.  He made the woman he loves completely frightened, irritated, and angry at him because he has put Megan on a pedestal without thinking of her qualities as a person in the workplace.

They both go to work with neither acting like anything has happened but Bert Cooper tells Don point-blank that he his honeymoon is over and he needs to stop being on ‘love leave’.   Don is so in love with Megan he has not really realized what has gone on at work or in the lives of his own co-workers, even Megan herself.  Can he return back to the Don Draper of yore in the workplace and make his marriage with Megan work?  

None of these three stories has a real ending.  Things do end on some level but what will continue for Roger, Don, and Peggy is going to be something very different.  Whether it is for their betterment or not, that is what I hope the rest of the this season delves into as we hit the halfway mark.

Other Thoughts:

I know people praised Cooper for his lecture to Don but who was ‘the little girl’?  Megan or Peggy?  I am not so taken by the tone and distinction of either in that statement.

I know people dive into the differences between Megan and Betty to death but Betty would not have have gone her own way back to New York like that or turned the tables on him in the sherbet scene.  

Like other episodes, Megan being off-screen has a bit of anxiety whether it is her absence in Don’s fever dream or her returning home as he looks for her around HoJos.  

I questioned whether Don was capable of violence but their fight really tested that theory.  He didn’t want to hit her but he certainly came close, fending off her whacking him with a brush, and both of them body-slamming the white carpet largely by his force (whether on purpose or a trip, remains gray).  The man is in love but it is not really healthy for their marriage.  I want him to give her space, he is figuratively suffocating her and that will only drive her away.  

The flashback to ‘Tomorrowland’, shows an idyllic scene of them leaving Disneyland as what Don imagines as ultimate bliss.  It was his real-life ‘Carousel’ but he can only have one of those.  What happens after this fight if not ending in the dissolution of their marriage will have to be a different kind of happiness.  

I am trying to get around to Megan’s whole display after the fight going to work.  Has she forgiven him and is she just ‘acting’ so another day can go by after they have somewhat of an understanding?   

This should be John Slattery’s Emmy entry episode if for just for him pulling off the pink towel turban.  

On one hand, Matthew Weiner completely defends the Don-Megan relationship as true love but on another hand (with the image above) he seems to have these cues for the audience to believe that Don-Megan are going the way of Roger and Jane.  Such as these carpet moments (image below):

If people are still skeptical of Megan as a character after this episode, I can only shake my head.  

Don gets Gene nothing in Plattsburgh.   If that boy ever reaches Sally’s age on the show, I want to know who he will consider to be his father: Don or Henry.  

So the actress who played Angela Chase’s mom plays Jane’s shrink.  Now if Patty Chase actually dropped acid on the show, I would like her a lot more (if she did it with Rayanne, I would have had a completely different opinion of her character).  

I am utterly confused over what month this is, I felt like the flashback meant that this was the one-year anniversary of the Disneyland moment when Don proposes to Megan.  

Now Don and Megan seemed to be on the skids of the dominant-submissive relationship.  I think Megan is all right with it as foreplay but the rest… no.  Boundary issues amok.  I feel like the ‘master’ quip by Megan is also poking at the whole I Dream of Jeanie television show that when you look back beyond its very innocent exterior, is a bit disturbing to watch now because of the gender dynamics of that show.  

There was no end credits music.  I got a feeling all of the musical rights went into Don whistling “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in the car flashback and Pet Sounds playing during the LSD trip.

Jane is Jewish.  Did this just never come up or did she hide that fact from Roger and his casually anti-semitism?

Obligatory Roger on LSD gif:

played Jenny Gunther aka the girl in driver’s ed. class that Pete is oogling.  Knew I recognized her.  Her hair looks a lot better straight and down than braided.  

MAD MEN

#5.05 

“Signal 30”

Pete Campbell wanted to become a Don Draper.  He wanted to be the hot shot ad executive, he wanted to be a king among men.  Even knowing Draper’s true identity of Dick Whitman, he has continued this path.  This may have been his greatest mistake.  

For one thing, Pete and Don were on two completely different ends of socio-economic class and life experience from the beginning.  There is also the fact that Don as the suburban husband who womanizes while his wife is largely unsuspecting as he remained a doting father to his children is that the wife and kids suited a role, a vision.  Don’s powerful presentation of “The Carousel” at its most cynical is Don seeing his family as a vision of the American Dream that is accessible for his clients.  Sure, there was love in those photos but it is clear the marriage to Betty was becoming nothing more than Don overpowering her with his influence and vision of what a wife should be.  That changed with Megan.  

Don Draper this season is way more controlled and many fans of the show have some ambivalence about this Don.  His fever dream shows his fears and anxieties but is he capable of violence?  People are waiting for the other shoe to drop, for his honeymoon with Megan to end.  But, as Chuck Klosterman wrote after the Season 5 premiere, this Don could easily be the ‘real’ Don who is finally coming out rather than the Don who lied his way into his first gig at Sterling Cooper and built up a facade that made him so enviable to characters like Pete, and even some viewers who should know better.

Pete cannot be Don for many reasons but him trying and failing seems like a set-up for this character going into an abyss.  The suicide pool on this show seems to have two prime candidates: Pete Campbell vs. Roger Sterling.  Both have revealed suicidal thoughts in past seasons and both seem to be on edge this season looking for appreciation.   Roger has largely stayed the same in the ‘poor little rich boy’ lifestyle and searching for further satisfaction but Pete’s changes as mentioned before have been trying to emulate the ideals of bringing up a family in the suburbs while getting his cake-eating at the workplace.   Roger’s masculinity cannot be questioned given his war experience that still haunts him but this episode was a series of Pete getting emasculated.  He has not a clue about how to fix the appliances in his home while the no-collar farm boy Don probably knows it like the back of his hand.  Pete does not know hot to fight being raised under Nannies and boarding schools while Lane came from a stiff upper-lip family and boxing lessons served as an imperative for survival.  Pete from previous seasons tried to shone his writing skills after Ken Cosgrove got published in The Atlantic Monthly out of jealousy— and all he got was Boy’s Life to publish his story for $40.  

Pete’s ambitions are firmly in the company but then he has his other fantasies that have been apparent since early seasons, such as his drive to be dominant and masculine by hunting, something he can never have in the city.  Pete wants to be the king of his castle but it is clear who dominated the domesticated space during the dinner and that was Trudy.   Kind of like how Megan dominated the house party in the series premiere, but she made it up to Don by re-instituting the balance of power with their dirty carpet sex kink.  Trudy lost her looks in Pete’s eyes (for shame, Peter Campbell!) and so he settles with a prostitute who gives him a long line of spiel before settling on him as a ‘king’. The lowest blow may have come from Pete making googly-eyes at a high school student in his driver’s ed. class only for her to immediately turn her attention to much more brawny, age-appropriate guy with the nickname, ‘Handsome’.  

Pete is cutthroat but him building alliances and impressing people have burned and blown up in his face.  Don casually remarking to Trudy on the phone that she knows how ‘to close’ better than her husband may have been an exaggeration but Pete throwing Lane, Roger, Peggy, and to a lesser extent, Ken Cosgrove under the bus on some level this season shows a guy who is reminding everybody why people hated the bastard in the first place.  The glee of everybody’s reactions to Pete getting the crapped beaten out of him by Lane and him crying foul tearfully in the elevator, “I thought we were friends!”  Not really, Peter.  

“Signal 30” being the episode after “Mystery Date” could possibly be the a connection with how weirdly masculinity and violence are so intertwined.  Charles Whitman, the University of Texas at Austin killer, is mentioned with Pete’s rifle coming up in the dinner conversation.  Have we come to a head where we have a literal Chekhov’s gun on the show that could have a body count?  Perhaps, yes, and perhaps, no.  But I think how the episode shows masculinity that succeeds an episode about what leads to violent urges does serve to underline a common theme of the period, note how close these events all are in the two episodes, a mere two weeks.  This was no accident and instead of going straight on to the bloodiest periods of the late ’60s that undermined the ‘summer of love’, Mad Men shows the dark clouds already present among the characters and the historical backdrop.  

Other Things:

Despite this episode being Pete stripped, this was Lane Pryce’s reclamation.  He has struggled with his English identity and enjoyment of things considered English in America given his outsider status in the agency that bares his name.  Sure, he lost the client to no fault but a very incredible place to stick your gum before sexual intercourse, but he beat the crap out of Pete for shaming him in front of the his fellow partners and he got to kiss Joan who totally forgave it.  

Why Joan is the best: She opens the door after the kiss, acts like it never happened, and then slyly says everybody wanted to do what he just did… to Pete.  Thank goodness she is back at the office.  

This was the best John Slattery-directed episodes by far.  Beautiful, fluid transitions, incredible humor found throughout, and scenes that were just total treats for fans.

One of those treats are Peggy and Joan reacting to the sounds of the fight, both who were sadly not featured much in this episode.  

I am glad Ken Cosgrove is still writing but not sure about the new pseudonym, Don Algonquin.  Given that Star Trek premieres about 5 weeks for when this episode ends, I kinda believe that Ken could soon be out of the office and on to better things writing science fiction.  

It is not entirely clear if Pete gave Ken up.  I can easily see Peggy casually mentioning to Roger that Ken has written great science fiction and accidentally outs him, despite their agreement.

I think the unanswered question about Roger having so much cash on him was answered when he treated the Jaguar exec and the others with prostitutes.  And I do not know what to think about the fact he took a busty redhead in that scene.

So Sterling’s Gold seemed to have flopped hard on Roger.  And now only Peggy and Don know about Miss Blankenship’s origins as a hellcat of sexual perversions.  May she rest in peace.  

Don saying if he met Megan first he never would be on his second marriage.  Again, this may test the believability of viewership but Don seems truly devoted.  Not batting an eye to anybody at a brothel?  Discipline!

I know he seems boring now but how cool is Don?  Telling the Madam he grew up in brothels (I am assuming his father didn’t stop despite his wife discovering a little accident named Dick Whitman from his earlier carnal extracurriculars) and that her place was nicer than he can imagine managed to get him a free drink despite not doing business.

Is Megan on the pill?  Drunk Don got so happy seeing Trudy and Pete’s kid that he wanted one in the car.  Was that the booze talking (he acted no such way despite being prodded by Joan showing him little Kevin Holloway about more kids) or is he serious?  I think it is the former but given they had two of these situations twice already, I wonder.  

Megan told Don to handle Trudy on the phone.  Bravo to Megan!  

I only have two samples, but I much preferred Ken’s narration to Don’s narration and that is because Ken writes beautiful prose underscored by Beethoven’s 9th while Don admits he has a 9th grade education and likely lower reading level.  Love how their narrative voices reflect their writing skills.  

Obligatory Pete got punched GIF:

MAD MEN

Episode #5.04

“Mystery Date”

1966 was a year of tension that included race riots and Vietnam protests.  It also was when Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood became one of the most popular books of its kind: a true crime novel that ties together the details and facts of the crime into something readable and entertaining.  How this innovative literary way of telling non-fiction devolved into police procedurals and infotainment newscasts in the 24 hour news-cycle came more in the late 1970s with the birth of cable and cases that involved high-profile, compelling people rather than two rogue petty criminals turned murderers.   But In Cold Blood clearly struck a chord with people soon projecting their own true crime interpretations of cases not yet solved.  This was the case with this Mad Men episode in the late summer of 1966 with the murders of nurses at the South Chicago Community Hospital.  Nobody knew yet about Richard Speck but the carnage was right there in full-view for anybody and everybody to look at.   

We first see the copy-writers at SCDP look at photos that Peggy’s friend Joyce, an employee of Time-Life, got through the magazine completely devouring through the grisly photos of the crime scene and the details of the case.  This disturbs the new kid on the block Michael Ginsberg and his outrage leads to a transition of a point of view shot of Joan opening an oven.  Given that Ginsberg’s Jewish heritage is given an exclamation point thus far, one wonders if Ginsberg’s reaction is not to the fact it is a violence against woman story but the story of a discriminating massacre of human life.  Michael seems too young to have lived through the Shoah but it is likely he had relatives who died in the Holocaust as his father seems to be a FOTP.   There is also the fact that Ginsberg’s Cinderella-based ad pitch seems to fall right into a perverse, “she wants to be caught”, rape fantasy that shows that he is not this proto-feminist man disgusted by violence against women specifically.  

The fascination and paranoia around the Speck case continues.  After Peggy shakes more money out of Roger to do weekend’s work for Mohawk Airlines, she does work and hears a strange noise in the office.  Given that Peggy has probably worked countless hours by herself or with very few people, it seems her paranoia is heightened by the fact she got a close-up of those eight nurses murdered.   Instead, Peggy finds the new secretary Dawn sleeping in the office lobby because she has her own paranoia with the fact of woman of her color simply cannot go to certain parts of the city at night.  Peggy invites her to her apartment and we get moments of Drunk Peggy that if you thought the case of Richard Speck heightened her paranoia, it does not compare to her heightened awkwardness with the consumption of alcohol.  Peggy simply cannot relate to Dawn, though she tries.  Dawn pretty much won the lottery by getting a secretary job at SCDP with no ambitions to be a copy-writer.  She knows her limitations in society and Peggy does not understand.  It recalls her first interactions with Abe that how she assumes that any person of color could do what she does if they had the same resume which simply comes off as a naive.  Peggy’s upbringing that includes casual racism still cracks through her progressive mindset after she gives a look that stops Dawn cold when she wants to remove her purse from her living room as Dawn intends to sleep on the couch.  Peggy’s guilt reaps over her the moment she does it and feels bad the following day after Dawn leaves a note.  Stay tuned to this story.

Sally Draper is definitely not the target demographic of true-crime literature but her intellectual curiosity gets the better of her when she is stuck with Henry’s mother Pauline in the house.  Given that both of them are already intimidated by the house, that either of them indulged in this story was not the smartest idea.  But we see Sally and Pauline have an initially cold Betty-Sally redux to being cordial to the point that Pauline decides to share a pill with her to help her go to sleep after Sally is scared shitless from hearing Pauline’s highly sexualized interpretation of the story.   Is this taking pills the stuff of things to come for Sally?  Sally is always a character to stay tuned on, but the nature of the late 60’s makes her a must-see character and one who does not have to operate with the presence of her parents as this episode proves.  

This episode is also about the past and the future.  This is no more apparent with the Joan and Don stories.  Joan in Season 4 felt under-appreciated in the office with harassment that led to the firing of a copy-writer and losing the shine of her Queen Bee crown in general.  She decides to go through with a pregnancy to get a chance to feel appreciation but immediately realizes that she misses the workplace.  With her husband coming home, the husband who raped her in the office of Don Draper in after hours, Joan is prepared to go back to SCDP to only be told without her input that he has volunteered to return to Vietnam.  Joan has had it.  She is tired of pretending that she got what she wanted out of this marriage.  She intended to marry a competent, well-paid medical physician and live in New York while raising a family.  Instead she gets an Army Medic who joined after failing to have proper surgical skills who refuses to return to home life— he would rather get livable but low pay from the Army if it means he earns the type of respect and status he has long sought.  The scene at the dinner was Greg being assertive in uniform and frankly, it was very little boy playing dress-up as a police officer.  She knows he is not a good man, and has not concerned himself with her feelings and opinions on his enlistment and re-enlistment.  If she is not part of his life, why try to pretend otherwise?  

Don and Megan’s relationship is something that has become still about trust.  Megan knows Don’s reputation, she slept with him when he was with somebody else.  But she does appear to believe she can set the ground rules with him; starting with not having every previous fling come up to him and throw themselves at him.  Don being faithful seems to be a test that he has excelled at thus far with not even so much as a wandering eye.  But a meeting with a fling while Megan is also on the elevator seems to set up a literal fever dream of delirium that just shows how dark Don’s subconscious can be.   Don likes women with a certain edge to them be it Midge, Rachel, or Megan but he seems to have placed the Madonna-Whore Complex with Megan as the Madonna and all the women of his past encapsulated through the appearance of the fling being strangled to death after stalking and seducing a very vulnerable and sick Don Draper.  She represents what Don is trying to suppress and defeat.  He wants this marriage to work, he wants to be a better man.  It is no coincidence that Megan, who now has Anna Draper’s ring, is seen in the same angelic gaze that Don placed on the dearly departed Anna after he wakes up.  Too on the nose?  Yes, but it also plays into how Megan’s anti-cynicism persona is not a hypocritical front like Michael Ginsberg but something that others, specifically Don, believe her to actually be such a person.   This may be too much pressure on Megan in the end but hey, he is trying, right?  

This show went through a violence against women motif that was all through every story.  It was Mad Men at its creepiest with the dark side of characters established and new being displayed and how women react and deal with people the object/victim of these desires be it blood-lust murder or advertising.   This episode was both off-beat and on the nose in so many ways.  An episode both strange and direct in what it was doing and the early front-runner for best of Season 5.

Other Observations:

“The Moment I Realized Don’s Story was a Dream”: When the hours passed by and Megan was nowhere to be found.  Those two seem to trail each other leaving work too much for her to just disappear without coming home.  

The ad for Mystery Date plays to the dark side of the episode with people coming through the door who are complete strangers and threats to you.  This was the story arcs of Peggy, Joan and Don each with a stranger who is now company and how to deal, obviously on different levels.

I think part of my appreciation for this episode has a lot to do with the end credits inclusion of “He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)” by The Crystals, eerily and ironically produced by Phil Spector.  Perfect song.

So is Megan getting on Don for smoking in general or just not to smoke when he has a cold?   

No offense to Grandma Francis but Richard Speck as a handsome man, no.  Just…. no.

I mean he was not yet caught but her projecting this sexualized story to a young girl reeked of somebody who would devour the true crime novels and rape fantasy romance novels.

The striking images of hiding under the bed with Sally and Don disposing a body under his bed plays into both the Speck murder and the general childhood fears.  Monsters under the bed and hiding under furniture from danger.   

Stan Rizzo fitting pantyhose over his head- excellent.  

Biggest question for next week’s episode: Why the hell is Roger still carrying around that much cash?  

And then there was Peggy making it rain with $400!

You wonder why the show robbed us of so many of these Roger-Peggy incredible moments like this:

EPISODE 5.02 “Tea Leaves”

About a month has gone by since the premiere episode in date.  Post-Independence Day 1966.  SCDP did, in fact, hire a black secretary (though I was not quite sure which lady took the fall).  Thankfully, the secretary, Dawn (bum-duh-dum!), did not become Mr. Pryce’s secretary.  She became Don’s secretary (get it?).  Not for nothing, Dawn could easily become a significant character given the track record for Draper secretaries, but for her sake, I hope it is closer to Peggy than Megan or Jane or, heaven forbid, Allison.  At this point she is in the background with no real controversy despite the jackassery of Roger Sterling racial puns and Harry trying to stir up shit (we will get to him later).

This episode seems to commit to the generational divide a lot with SCDP still having the Heinz Bean Guy wanting to control the content over his ad. The dinner conversation Megan and Don share with the gentleman and his wife show where the lines are divided and it is not clearly as cut and dry.  Megan and Don represent a new generation of married couples who met in the workplace.  Megan really wanted to make sure she is not still known as ‘the secretary’ but as a career-woman still fighting the notions about their relationship- instead of people immediately think Roger and Jane Part Deux.  The whole dinner seems a bit awkward exposing the obvious generational divide, with Megan knowing immediately off the bat what music the Heinz Bean Guy’s daughter listens to rather than being a Betty and calling it ‘kid’s stuff’.  But the Don moments of this episode also show he has finally submitted that he is old and of the older crowd.  He is the concerned father who wants to know what exactly is Sally Draper into rather than just contently watching her and thousands of others explode at Shea Stadium during the height of Beatlemania. 

Don agrees with the Heinz Bean Guy to try and do what was a bit impossible in 1966: Convince The Rolling Stones to change the lyrics of their song into a Heinz beans jingle.  They should have asked The Who. 

Don goes with Harry to a concert to find them.  Harry is tasked with the job while also getting high and (thankfully) failing at flirting with high school age girls. Season 1-4 Don in that environment would make me incredibly nervous but in this episode, Don clearly cannot identify or be coy with the younger girls and he never tries.  He simply asks how they feel about The Stones and realizes how ‘lame’ this whole pitch will look with Harry quixotically amidst the stoned fog believing he has talked The Stones into the deal.  Don afterward just surmises that he is not really into placating to teenage girl’s fantasies with an ad for beans.  He definitely sees Sally in the girls who would throw themselves at Brian Jones.  The night SCDP tried to ink The Stones was more of Don doing detective work on how the new generation sees things rather than just playing along like Heinz Bean Guy.  But they still have to get the ad to work.

Peggy went with her idea (still brilliant) like the baby with the bathwater.  Roger, despite him and Lane agreeing on Peggy’s skills, thinks they need a man to work on the ad to ensure they get the guy to agree to the ad.  But they do not want some square and tell Peggy to find a young, hip, interesting copy-writer.  Peggy basically has to find the cool kid, that she and Stan each think that could be seen as a threat.  Peggy is no dummy.  She knows any copy-writer she hires is a threat.  Stan Rizzo was a threat and it took episodes (as in months) for them to just be cordial frenemies.  But now finding a guy to specifically work on a certain ad that could really life the company is a whole new animal.  She discovers Michael Ginsburg who is like a hybrid of Stan Rizzo, Abe Drexler, Woody Allen, and even a little bit of Don Draper.  Their initial interview goes off so poorly that by the end of the episode when Ginsburg dials it down to get the job after a more professional interview she is even angrier.  Peggy is right to call out his calculations.  She had to feel disrespected that Ginsburg turned a complete 180 from their interview when he interviewed with a partner.  Was it because she was a woman and/or he does not take her seriously?  Either one is problematic but if it is both, I cannot see this going any better than the initial Stan Rizzo rivalry.  I think Peggy has every right to continue to be suspicious.  Peggy played by all the rules to get to where she is and did it with no bargains (except her failed back-up plan to join Duck Phillips) or family ties.  She has mastered playing against the old boy’s club.  Now suddenly her company, a company that she has put hours of labor and love into, is hiring people who break all of the rules?  I am staying tune to the developments on that storyline. 

Now we finally get to the real talk of the episode despite it being the most open and shut part of the episode.  Betty Draper got fat or rather, January Jones got pregnant and the show is masking it as her gaining a bunch of weight.  Given how much the episodes got placed out of order based on January Jones’ pregnancy and how it only jumped a month rather than months which in Mad Men time is very short, it is understandable how this part episode seemed a bit unremarkable.  Tonally after an episode with as much zip and fun as the premiere, this seemed a bit all over the place, especially the Betty story.  Betty is fat.  Why?  Possible cancer or simply she slipped into an abyss of depression, eating her feelings in La Casa de Francis.  It was not the former, much to Betty’s chagrin, and she continues the vicious cycle by eating the rest of Sally’s Ice Cream Sundae.  The end. 

That was really it.  Aside from Jones looking a bit padded, a la Unknowingly Pregnant Peggy and straight out of Stephen King’s Thinner, there was no real surprising revelation.  Except that she seems a lot nicer to Sally (did anybody put it past her that she was drag that child down with her by making Sally eat her feelings with her?).  She and Don also bizarrely seem to not completely hate each other like last season.  She now just sees him as a voice she can talk to when Henry is not around but do not think current spouses when she told him the ‘c-word’ as a major possibility.  Let’s not think Henry or Megan like this idea.  Henry still loves Betty and still sees her as he first met her and you believe it.  Megan also would not want to be treated like Betty or have Don think she is Betty.  She prefers to not have Don handle her with kid’s gloves when discussing Betty’s possible looming death.  She may be young but I think she and Don each underestimate how much and how little one expects from the other.

Matthew Weiner mentioned in an interview how the second episode is really when critics/viewers/internet groupthink always seem to gang up on the show.  This seemed like raw meat to the wolves but it did offer some good set-ups to place in bold in later episodes. 

Quick Thoughts:

More Peggy and Roger moments, please.

Casa de La Francis seems to have a gothic theme that seems to be missing a butler.  Better yet a nanny for the kids.  I am assuming Carla never returned after she told off Betty and now the kids are unsupervised.  Judging by the gothic nature of the house, I can imagine Bobby #4 and Sally having a lot of fun. Perfect for sleepovers.

No more dream Betty scenes.  That woman needs a therapist now.  

Pete’s actions about announcing Mohawk Airlines really did seem to twist the knife in Roger in front of everybody.  Roger is surviving with a clown mask on but the man still has feelings.

The Megan-Don issue over Betty.  I get what Don was thinking.  Going back to the premiere where Don tells Joan in the nicest way, ‘Oh, hell no!’ regarding more kids and Megan not really enjoying holding Kevin, I think there is an unsaid agreement that neither wants to have more children and that Megan as the mother figure is ill-befitting for her and the kids.  I think Megan quietly acknowledges this but it is still pretty dumb for Don to imply she does not understand death.  But still, I think he does care about how happy she is and taking care of children who are not hers is not on the list. 

I know people were very skeptical of Henry Francis when he premiered as Betty’s rescuer in Season 3.  Some people just found him creepy.  But I think he has come to be one of the few sane characters.  Yes, the marriage is not perfect but he does point out Betty’s shortcomings as an individual directly and he still manages to see her as the woman he first laid eyes on.  Betty found a keeper.  

No Joan this episode but she appears to return in previews along with Momma Holloway. 

I was waiting for a Betty-Megan confrontation but it appears Betty never leaves the house for it to happen.  That said, her shaving off years from Megan’s age and making it seem like they married over night seemed to be master class in passive aggression based on her sheer nonchalance.  With that said, I wonder about if there are going to be more details of any visual cues to the wedding day.  Was it a pretty informal ceremony and how many people went?  I mean if Peggy did not even get them a gift, I begin to wonder.

Jon Hamm directed this episode.  Shame he got such a tonally messy episode to deal with but there were some beautiful shots of the Draper children sprinting with sparklers in the front yard of La Casa de Francis that made up for the oh so obvious shot of a Betty Body-Double.

The Betty scenes truly were a predictable exercise that would get you killed in a writer’s workshop.  If there is a scene that could not make you, as a viewer, feel five steps ahead of the episode it was the palm reader scene. 

I still give the episode a break because it was operating out of order in production.