“Mad Men” Recap, 408: “The Summer Man”

“The Summer Man” refers to a man waking up, leaving the New York Athletic Club after swimming and announcing that he could smell the warm season, his olfactory nerves lighting up for the first time in a while, and while the corn smell is probably a faint memory of Dick Whitman’s childhood on the farm, the perfume on the girls in their summer clothes is real. Don Draper is not a changed man, but he is a changing man. He is forcing himself to write every day and opening the shades of his apartment for the first time this season — the effect is so bracing, at first I thought he was holed up in a cabin somewhere.

Don laments the difficulty he finds in writing, and how lazy he was as a teenager, writing the bare minimum on essays — five paragraphs, 50 words each, never writing more than 250 words at a time, ever. To my memory, this is also the first time we learn about the extent of Dick Whitman’s formal education. “I should have finished high school. Everything could have been different.” That may or may not be true in the official sense of his accomplishment as an advertising executive, since in the 1950s and 60s it was still possible to scale corporate ladders without a college or even high school education, but Draper might have been different. His lack of a diploma is just a panel in his quilt of illusion, something else that he had to cover up with alcohol. It must be noted that Draper is not exactly on the wagon in “The Summer Man,” but he’s trying, and every sip he takes of a beer, wine or even bourbon in this episode feels like a punch in the gut, but for Don, moderate social drinking qualifies as teetotaling.

Meanwhile, Joey (Matt Long) is pushing the limits of what SCDP can institutionally bear in terms of jackassery. The candy machine in the breakroom steals some money and Joey tries to retrieve a candy bar, only to have the ravenous chocolate dispenser make off with his watch. Joan complains about the noise when Joey, Ken and Stan rock the machine back and forth, and when the twerp mouths off to Miss Holloway, she asks Joey into her office, castigates him and tells him he’s arrogant, to which Joey retorts, “”What do you do around here besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?”

Joey’s been on thin ice for a while, and getting Joan at a point when her husband is shipping off to boot camp is fatal timing. Furthermore, Peggy isn’t terribly thrilled with her old partner in crime anymore — much water has passed under the bridge since their “John/Marsha” repartee in Episode One.

Blankenship is bumbling around more than usual thanks to cataract surgery, and when she tries to deliver booze to Don, he turns the alcohol away and tells her to bring more cigarettes. She tells him that “his wife called,” to which Don replies “she’s not my wife.” Well, “Mrs. Francis” called to tell Don he cannot have the kids because it’s little “Bobby’s” (Gene’s) second birthday.

Joan goes home to her husband, who will be showing up on “China Beach” shortly, performing meatball surgery. He tries to console her by saying she won’t be all alone, that she can “talk to her friends at work.” Yeah, the toolboxes who are torturing her constantly with particularly nasty comments about her sexuality and her status at SCDP. Joan begins to cry uncontrollably, though it’s hard to say if it’s because her husband the surgeon isn’t the hot ticket she thought he would be, or because she’s being treated like complete garbage by a bunch of frat boys.

“More and more every day about Vietnam,” Don writes, which could say as much about this episode as anything else, since it informs Joan’s defense against the aforementioned toolboxes. Don writes that Gene was “conceived in a moment of desperation and born into a mess.” Don’s drinking a beer, but as he writes, in addition to climbing Kilimanjaro, he wants to “gain a modicum of control” over how he feels.

In a meeting with Ken, Peggy and Stan, Don tells the Mountain Dew team that the company thought its illustration of a hillbilly was perceived as a witch, and that they need to start over. Peggy is drinking scotch, and, having been passed a glass of his own, Don takes his own drink — every one of them hurts. Don tells Joan he needs Joey to come on full-time for a couple of weeks to bang it out, and Joan resists — she really doesn’t want anymore quippy bon mots about rape than she absolutely has to hear. As they leave, Don tells Peggy to have “Ray Charles come in here,” and Peggy motions to Blankenship.

Harry Crane is talking to Joey about “Peyton Place,” and how he suggested him as a player on the soap, which Joey interprets as a come-on — how many more minutes before this sniveling narcissist gets the bum rush? Peggy confronts Joey about his incident with Joan, and nothing’s getting through. “Message received,” Joey said. “Is it time to go yet?” Cue Peggy eyeroll.

Don is having dinner with Bethany (Anna Camp) when Henry and Betty show up at the restaurant to discuss the political future of future New York Mayor John Lindsay with a Republican operative. Betty spends most of the time looking like she’s going to reveal the lizard under all that peaches-and-cream skin, drinking gimlets as if lime is an endangered fruit. Bethany comments that each date with Don is like the first, and that’s especially true since this is probably the first time Don has been paying attention to anything she’s said. On the way home, Betty and Henry fight over her behavior, with Henry saying that Don is “taking up too much space in your life, maybe your heart.” The ensuing fight ends with “Shut up, Betty — you’re drunk.” Exactly.

Bethany, meanwhile, makes Don … “comfortable” in the back of a cab. Afterward, she tells him “to be continued…” and Don writes, “I bet she was thinking of that line all night.” Don is becoming more poetic in his journal writing, talking about the lonely sex lives of the women in Bethany’s apartment building and how he likes sleeping alone, stretching out “like a skydiver.” Last week, this would be seen as a metaphor for Don’s continued free fall, but now it just sounds like a man wanting to be unencumbered by the accumulated baggage of his life.

When Don returns to SCDP, he overhears Faye Miller (Cara Buono) breaking up with her boyfriend — well, that’s certainly helpful. At the same moment, Henry is trying to sneak out in the morning when Betty wakes up and desperately apologizes, batting her eyes, scrunching her forehead and generally looking like Tuesday Weld when she tries to justify her obsession with Don by saying, “he was the only man I’d ever been with.” As Henry leaves, he crunches a few boxes of Don’s belongings in the garage before backing out.

At the office, Joey’s acting like vodka and Mountain Dew is genius — it’s been 45 years, and still no successful bar drinks based on the Dew. Stan tells him, “You’re a haircut, you know that?” Peggy sends him back to the mixology board while Joan tries to make a case with Lane against Joey coming on full-time. Joey starts drawing a nasty picture of what Joan and Lane might be doing in his office. This was a bad move — he left a douchey paper trail. Henry calls Don to tell him to pick up the boxes of stuff on Saturday, since Sunday is Gene’s birthday, because he needs to store a hypothetical boat. Henry is actively trying to deny Don the right to show up for the birthday. Don is pissed and looks directly at his booze bottles before yelling, “Mrs. Blankenship, can I get some coffee!?!”

Peggy complains about losing money in the candy machine, and when Joan turns to get into her change box, she notices Joey’s drawing, taped to her window. Joan tells all the testosterony gasbags in the break room that she can hardly wait until they’re all dying in Vietnam. “Remember, you’re not dying for me, because I never liked you.” Peggy brings the drawing to Don, who at first is impressed with the art — “Are you sure Joey did this?” — but then tells Peggy that if she is suitably upset, she should fire Joey’s ass. “I wouldn’t tolerate that if I were you.”

So Peggy fires Joey’s ass after he balks at apologizing to Joan. When Joey tries to weasel his way back in, saying “We’ll see what Don says about that,” she replies, “Don doesn’t even know who you are.” That’s half-true — he barely knows who he is, and doesn’t like what he knows. Don’t let the door hit you in testicles, Joey.

Meanwhile, Don is making a persuasive play for Faye, who wonders aloud why it’s happening at that moment, to which Don tells her the timing is right. The difference is that Don is paying attention to Faye this time, and she senses it.

Betty and Francine (Anne Dudek) are getting ready for Gene’s party, and Betty tells her about her run-in with Don in the city. “Oh Betty, you have terrible luck with entertaining,” Francine says. Yes, above being a terrible mother and possessing an obnoxiousness that nearly eclipses her pulchritude, Betty is a crappy hostess.

When Peggy tells Joan about the firing while riding up in the elevator, Joan comes back with an unexpected bit of nastiness instead of gratitude, illustrating the bad feelings about strata in the workplace and how Joan must maintain control — if it is perceived by anyone that she lacks the ability to stand her own ground, she believes she will be seen as a “meaningless secretary.” Peggy was doing what she should have done weeks or months ago, but the timing and the trigger for the final decision have left Joan’s ego wounded.

“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him,” Don writes as we see him load up the boxes marked “Draper” that have been placed by the curb of his old home. “If you listen, he’ll tell you about the time when he thought he was an angel… We’re flawed because we want so much more. We’re ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had.” All this is being said as Henry, fresh from mowing the lawn, takes off his shirt before going in for a shower, much like Don used to when he cut that same grass.

Don may or may not want to be back in Westchester, doing yard work while Betty putters in the kitchen, but he’s yearning for something like it. Before dinner with Faye, he pours one finger of scotch, just for confidence. At Tavern On the Green, he tells her she smells nice, and she returns the gesture, commenting on his “chlorine” bouquet. He tells her that swimming “clears his head,” and he offers up that he’s been “out of sorts,” and that the swimming helps. Miller talks about her father and how he was connected with “restaurant suppliers,” to which Don jokingly puts his finger to his nose — an old expression for La Cosa Nostra. Don is unusually forthcoming with Faye, telling her about Gene’s birthday and how the boy thinks Henry is his father. Faye tells him that all Gene will know about the world is what Don shows him.

Faye is charmed, finally, thanks to Don being sober (ish) and vulnerable enough to actually listen and take interest in what she has to say, not her blond hair and outward charm. “Kindness, gentleness and persuasion win where force fails.” She wants him, but Don actually waves her off. “Because that is as far as I can go right now.” That’s not what she expected, but this is “The Summer Man.”

I think we understand that Don wants to be better — that much is obvious when he actively beats the guy in the next swim lane over at N.Y.A.C. He shows up at Gene’s party to show him who dad really is. Betty comments that she and Henry should not be threatened by his unexpected arrival, that “we have everything.” But the look on her face, as he’s bouncing Gene in the air, is that “we had everything.”

We also understand that Don is designed as a tragic figure — he is, after all, the man falling from the building in that opening title sequence. But after the fall, he is shown in repose, on a couch, surveying his kingdom. With “The Summer Man,” we see that at his heart, despite feelings of inadequacy (and realistically, those will likely get worse if he ends up with Faye and her Ph.D), he wants to land well.

– Lang

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