Juvenile Cinephile

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: