“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
Video: Sunday Lane singing “Find Your Way”
Tulsa native Sunday Lane met with me shortly after her EP release this summer and to film a song with her brother. I just got around to posting the results.
Lane goes to school in Florida so she won’t be playing in Oklahoma any time soon, but keep her on your radar. She has a lot of potential and she can sing without getting distracted by motorcycles.
Now that’s talent.
-Poppe
Video of the Day: B.o.B. and Rivers Cuomo, “Magic”
Sure, there’s a new Weezer album out there. But with “Magic,” do you really need it?
– Lang
Video of the Day: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Bottled in Cork”
Paul F. Tompkins wants to take our boys to the Great White Way, because everyone knows that punk works best on Broadway.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap: 407, “The Suitcase”
“The Suitcase” moves our storyline several months into the future: it is May 25, 1965, the night of the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight, and it seems everyone at SCDP is betting on Liston, even though in his previous fight against then-Cassius Clay in February 1964, Liston stopped the fight in the seventh round, claiming injury. But anyone outside of the advertising business who keeps claiming they’re “the greatest” is going to get their fair share of bad feelings, and Ali’s then-recent conversion to Islam took care of the rest. But two minutes into the fight, Ali hit Liston, but he didn’t seem to hit him that hard. It was a fight that was widely perceived as being thrown. Don Draper, meanwhile, is going down for the count in “The Suitcase,” but there are indications toward the conclusion that he might yet live to fight another day. But to extend the boxing metaphor as far as I am willing, “The Suitcase” was a knockout.
Harry’s selling tickets to the fight, and the attitude around SCDP is mostly pretty nastily pro-Liston — everyone is still referring to Ali as “Clay,” and Ida Blankenship makes the kind of bad racist joke that makes you wonder about the wisdom of the ancients. With the hindsight afforded by history, you have to wonder about all this confidence in Liston, given how badly he performed in his previous fight with Ali, but a large section of the population would have placed spite bets against Ali back then, even if his opponent was Danny Siegel. Speaking of Danny, he, Peggy, Joey and Stan perform a proposed Samsonite ad for Don that would theoretically star Joe Namath, the University of Alabama star who had just been drafted by the New York Jets. The ad play, involving a kind of suitcase scrimmage, is supposed to be funny but is more whimsical than actually humorous, and Don’s not happy. He also doesn’t think Namath should be used, since he considers using celebrities a “cheat” and besides, Broadway Joe had yet to play his first pro game. So they’re sent back to the drafting board.
It’s Peggy’s 26th birthday (she’d be 71 now, for those keeping score at home), and Duck Phillips calls after having sent over some business cards for a new firm he’d like to start with her. Of course, Duck made an ass of himself at the Clio Awards earlier in the year, and he seems to have lost his job because of that and is hitting the booze in a way that makes Don look like a poster child for temperance. She can hear the ice clinking in his glass and tries to gently pass on his idea, but Duck becomes belligerent when she accuses him of drinking. He eventually admits he is “falling apart.” After Peggy has to hang up, Duck even spills ice on himself while tipping the glass — the man is preserved in 80 proof.
Blankenship tells Don he received an urgent phone call from “a Stephanie” in California, but Don is avoiding the obvious: Anna is either dying or has passed on. Roger begs Don to come with him to Lewiston for the fight, mainly because he’s stuck with on-the-wagon Freddy Rumsen and his AA sponsor at Pond’s, and Roger desperately needs a drinking buddy. Don declines to work on the Samsonite campaign, and if Don’s working late, everyone’s working late, damn it, especially Peggy, who is supposed to meet Mark for a birthday dinner at Forum of the Twelve Caesars, which was the big, ostentatious place to eat in Midtown back in the 1960s, and served food with ridiculously lavish names like “Pheasant of the Golden House on a Silver Shield of Gilded Plumage Roasted with an Exquisite Sauce.” Trudy stops by SCDP mainly to make Peggy feel bad about being 26, unmarried and without child, but the work that has sidelined Peggy from matrimonial and maternal bliss will consume her more as the Draper Monster insists that she stay and finish Samsonite. She calls Mark at the restaurant (they have one of those elite phones with long cords) and informs him that she’ll be 15 minutes late, and we learn that he has invited her evil mother and sister along as a surprise. Somebody doesn’t know his girlfriend very well.
Peggy has more ideas, but Don’s shooting them down like skeet and trying to find an Ali-Liston angle as a he grumbles “Muhammad Ali” under his breath. Roger calls to beg Don to come to the fight — he just sneaked out for a drink — but who’s kidding who? That’s like a six-hour drive. Then Mark calls again to complain that an hour has passed and he’s stuck with Peggy’s miserable family at an ultra-expensive restaurant. Peggy tries to escape, but the Draper Monster attacks, complaining that she should have grown out of the whole birthday celebration thing by now. She calls Mark back and they have one of the worst breakups imaginable: over the phone, while he’s sitting at dinner with her family. Cringe.
That’s when Peggy goes back and a kind of World War III breaks out in Don’s office, with Peggy accusing him of forcing her to work on a concept late mainly because he stole that “Cure for the Common Breakfast” crap from Danny, and further accuses him of running with the Glo-Coat concept for which she apparently provided the early inspiration and never thanking her for her work. By this point, Don’s screaming at her, “That’s what the money’s for!”
Peggy goes away to cry, only to have Don call for her when he discovers a Dictaphone tape from Roger’s memoirs, in which he describes the early days of Sterling Cooper and how Bert Cooper’s secretary, Ida Blankenship, was the “queen of perversions.” Yes, the ancient Ida Blankenship was apparently the Joan Holloway of her day, and poor Bert Cooper is a gelding. Yikes! They share a laugh and then spend a couple of hours drinking and eating, actually talking like friends, and they discuss the rumors that surround Peggy and Don — the subject of much of Stan’s venality in the previous episode. Don claims he never made a pass because of office decorum, but Peggy then mentions the whole Allison fiasco as rebuttal, to which Don says, “You don’t want to start giving me morality lessons, do you?” They talk about Peggy’s baby: apparently, Peggy’s venal mother thinks Don was the father, because he was the only one who visited her in the mental ward.
Then they return to the office and after the rocket-ship ride up the Time-Life elevators, Don runs to the bathroom and yaks up everything. And really, that was one of the most visceral-sounding vomit sessions I’ve ever heard in TV or film — glad he made it to the stall rather than going full-splat like Roger and his martini-soaked oysters. Meanwhile, Peggy sees Duck sneaking into the office, ostensibly to leave a steaming brown present in Don’s office. Peggy points out that it is, in fact, Roger’s office and tries to get Duck out of there, but Don, still reeling from the retching, calls Duck out. Duck might be drunk, but he didn’t just vomit his guts out, and after a brief and ridiculous fight that makes the Ali-Liston rematch look like the Thrilla in Manila, Don says “Uncle.”
Don asks Peggy to pour him a drink. She asks, “How long are you going to go on like this?” His response is about as laid-bare as Don/Dick gets at the office (well, until the next scene). “”I have to make a phone call, and I know it’s gonna be bad,” he said. Then he rests his head on Peggy’s lap and passes out.
There is likely some fairly inconsequential debate going on about what happens next: Don wakes up and sees the ghostly image of Anna, carrying a suitcase. She smiles at Don, turns and disappears. I’m certain there are some fans of the supernatural who would like to believe that Don was actually being visited by the angel or ghost of Anna, but Don went to sleep deeply intoxicated and worried about the phone call. Anna was at the very tip of his brain, and so his dream reflected his immediate anxiety. He wakes up at dawn and calls Stephanie, who informs him that Anna died, and asks Don if she can live there in San Pedro for a semester. He agrees, hangs up and starts crying uncontrollably. Don tells Peggy that Anna was “the only person in the world who really knew me.”
Peggy replies, “That’s not true.” Yes, indeed.
Peggy goes to her office to sleep for a bit before being loudly awakened by Danny, Joey and Stan. She goes back to Don’s office, where he’s showing her a Samsonite storyboard based on the Ali-Liston fight. She has problems with it, to which Don asks, “Why are you sh–ting all over this?” Peggy then tells him, “It’s very good.” Don holds her hand for a moment, then tells her to go home, take a shower and “come back with 10 tag lines.”
Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss: this is your 2011 Emmy reel. Another great episode from a superb season, “The Suitcase” is establishing one thing above all: Don Draper will probably do exactly as Faye Miller suggested earlier and get remarried within the year, but the most important relationship he will have in his life after the death of Anna Draper is with Peggy Olson. In the “previously on ‘Mad Men’” montage, we were reminded of Don visiting Peggy in the hospital and seeing her at her most vulnerable. Now, the score is even. A cynic might say that they each have something on each other, but in the offices of SCDP, where most communication is done superficially and people are identified by their conquests both business and sexual, no one knows one other better than Don and Peggy.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap: 406, “Waldorf Stories”
Don Draper always excelled at being who he needed to be. It was a survival instinct that went back to the days of the Great Depression, when Dick Whitman learned the hobo code, that important way of finding out where a drifter would be welcome. These days, he is drifting more than ever as his Clio victory turns into a lost weekend and his alcohol abuse finally catches up with his duties as both a creative genius and father. One of the prevailing themes of “Waldorf Stories” is the arbitrary nature of success, or as Don says shortly after picking up his Clio for Glo-Coat, “You finish something, you find out everyone loves it right around the time that it feels like someone else did it.” Of course, when you’re Don Draper and Dick Whitman, someone else is always part of the equation.
“Waldorf Stories” begins with Don and Peggy interviewing Danny Siegel (Danny Strong) for a job at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Danny is clearly an overmatched cheesehead who allegedly has Roger Sterling in his back pocket and has delusions of being the cure for the common advertising executive. In fact, his entire portfolio consists of variations on that hoary old “cure for the common whatever” construction, which was apparently dead as dirt even in 1965, and Don Draper cannot get this twerp out of his office fast enough. He won’t even recommend a lunch destination to Danny — he fobs that task onto Ida Blankenship who loudly declares, “I don’t work for you!” Don then proceeds to Roger’s office, where he’s dictating his scintillating memoirs — vanilla was the preferred ice cream flavor in the Sterling household, apparently because it didn’t stain. Don compliments Roger on the Danny joke, and Roger informs Don that Danny is Jane Siegel Sterling’s cousin, and if SCDP doesn’t give the homunculus a shot, it’s going to cost him a Jane consolation gift in the range of $500 to $1000.
Then we get a superb flashback to a time around 1955 or so, when Roger’s hair wasn’t completely sterling and he was buying a gift — a fur — for another woman in his life, and the salesman at the fur shop was Don Draper, a young hotshot who wanted to break into the ad game. Don is an expert mover with the furs and mentions that he does all of his store’s advertising — that poster with the beautiful blond, the future ex Mrs. Draper, was his work — but beyond the pelt, Roger isn’t buying what Don is selling. The scene cuts to a hotel room where Roger is not presenting the gift to Mrs. Sterling, but to Joan Holloway, who in the mid-’50s was rocking an appropriate Marilyn Monroe-style ‘do. And inside the fur box is a portfolio, including a spec ad for Play-Doh: “Open a can on a rainy day.” Classic Draper, but Roger complains that this move was an overstep.
Back in 1965, the executives from Life cereal are delayed, which means the bar is open — amusingly, Joan tells Joey he can make his own damn drink. Peggy learns that Joan is being brought to the Clio Awards to get everybody hot and bothered. Irritated but not as irritated as she will be later, Peggy goes into new art director Stan’s office, where he’s trying to impress Megan by showing her the political ad he did for Lyndon Johnson, a never-aired attack ad against Barry Goldwater featuring a Klan rally. Peggy already hates Stan — he remarks that the fact that it never aired makes it less impressive. When she complains about his obvious flirtation, Stan cuts her down as being prude and asexual. He’s a real peach, that Stan.
We now cut to the Clios held at that art-deco midtown monument, the Waldorf-Astoria, where Don and Roger get their drink on and Cosgrove and the scion of the Birds Eye frozen food company show up, and a stray comment seems to indicate that SCDP might be merging with Cosgrove’s firm, which makes Pete turn purple and plaid with rage. Emcee Wallace Harriman (“Days of Our Lives” veteran actor and father-of-a-famous-actress John Aniston) is presiding when he is interrupted by a ragingly drunk Duck Phillips, who is promptly escorted from the banquet hall. Don quips, “I feel like I’ve already won.”
Back at the office, Stan and Peggy are trying to bang out the Vicks campaign that Pete brought over. Stan, who is allegedly the art director, fancies himself a creative director and is jackassing around the room, trying to make Peggy just take notes while he “speechifies” the whole Vicks thing. Peggy needs to bring a bag of hammers down on this guy.
When floor waxes are announced, SCDP is victorious for the Glo-Coat ad, and Don accepts the award with ebullience and handshakes. Well, word comes from Joan that the Life cereal people have unexpectedly arrived at the offices, and Don decides they need to strike when the iron is hot and stirring his fifth or sixth drink. The whole gang races back to the Time-Life Building, where the Life guys are downing their own round of scotches, and Don, fighting back a bad case of the booze belches, delivers the tagline: “Eat Life By the Bowlful.” It’s a good campaign — kids will love it because it’s a big bowl of stuff, mothers will love it because they’re aware that their children are growing up fast — carpe diem and all that. Well, the good folks at Life think that’s too intellectual of an approach and that stupid people just won’t get it. So Don starts spitballing a bunch of terrible off-the-cuff ideas (uncomfortable television alert: watching flop sweat from Don Draper has to be one of the worst) until he spits out “Life: The Cure for the Common Breakfast.” This horrendous Danny Siegel bit of hackery is a sure-fire hit with these boobs, and everyone is happy except Peggy, who tries to pull Don aside and talk about his plagiarism. Instead, Don consigns Peggy to hell in a hotel room with Stan, where they are to hash out the Vicks campaign or else.
Pete confronts Lane about this possible merger, and the news for our weasel is slightly worse: Lane is bringing Cosgrove (and his Birds Eye account) into SCDP. Pete goes from purple and plaid to white-hot fury upon learning that his arch-enemy will be joining them, but Lane puts the smooth language on Pete and manages to mollify things, telling Pete that “Roger Sterling is a child” and that “”We can’t have you pulling the cart all by yourself.”
Our heroes are raising the gross domestic products of Kentucky, the Soviet Union and Scotland at a Clio aferparty, where Don puts some not-very-smooth moves on Faye Miller, who tells him “I think you’re confusing a lot of things at once.” Faye might be interested in Don in the way that Don is interested in Faye, but she’s too smart to let him know that. She also is probably more interested in him as a subject. Who is Don Draper?
Well, this is who he is tonight: he’s the kind of guy who attracts a Carole Bayer Sager type who just won a Clio for a jingle, and it’s words and music at the man cave. Meanwhile, Roger is getting morose and Joan is letting him know it. What does Roger do? “I find guys like him,” he says. So we flash back to 1955 and Don has cajoled Roger into martinis at 10 a.m. Roger is still resistant to hiring his fur salesman, but really what we’re seeing is the beginning of one of the great enabling friendships of the mid 20th century.
Back at the hotel, Stan is perusing Playboy while Peggy is trying to actually work. Stan claims he is one liberated pseudo-hipster who can get inspired by some serious nudity, while Peggy insists that he wouldn’t be so enthralled if the naked ladies could make eye contact with him. When Stan continues to assail Peggy for being stodgy, she starts taking off her clothes. And there she is in the altogether, forcing Stan to reveal his pudginess and work with a real live nude. She’s a modern woman, our Peggy, and Stan is a cro-mag with a tumescence issue. Eventually, Stan is forced to say uncle, because Peggy is doing a fine job of staring at him in just the right way to make it impossible for Stan to think about cough drops.
In other sex news, Don is with the Carole Bayer Sager type back at Che Draper, and in a neat edit, he wakes up to an angrily ringing phone while lying next to another woman, a blond named Doris who served him three plates of fries before going home with our big souse, who was apparently so drunk he introduced himself to her as “Dick.” The anger on the other end of the line matches the ringer: Betty is way ticked off because Don forgot about picking up the kids during his blackout lost weekend. After mumbling an apology, he tells Doris he has a commitment, excuses himself to the bathroom while he waits for her to leave, then pours another drink and falls asleep. He is then woken up by Peggy, who has a few choice words for him about stealing Danny Siegel’s stupid campaign. He will have to make it right.
Back at SCDP on Monday, Don/Dick is offering Danny a freelance fee so he can use his “Cure for the Common Breakfast” spiel for Life. Danny tells him “I don’t need money. I need a job.” Don is so exasperated with the situation that he capitulates and hires him. Between Joey and Danny, the average IQ just dipped about 10 points at SCDP.
Finally, back in 1955, we see Don meeting up with Roger in the downstairs lobby of the old Sterling Cooper, but Roger is tired of this fur guy bugging him. The problem is, Don tells Roger that he hired him during that three-martini breakfast they had, and “Waldorf Stories” ends with Sterling accepting this story and Don wearing a goofy grin as the elevator door closes. Now, I’ve watched this episode three times, and I’m pretty sure that Don faked his way in — no job was offered, drunk-offered or not. The line between what Don did and what Danny did is pretty thin, but Don had talent out of the gate. Danny just watches a lot of TV.
We’ve seen it before, but one of the real highlights of “Waldorf Stories” is Jon Hamm’s performance as the young, more wide-eyed Don Draper. They’re not falling back on make-up to establish the 20-something, fresh from stealing his identity Draper — Ham just plays Don with more energy, eager-to-please and without the weight of his industry and fabricated life on his shoulders. But “Waldorf Stories” also represents a new low for an anti-hero who was scaling the depths anyway: when Betty called and started doing her harpy routine with him, he didn’t jump to attention, drive to Westchester and pick up the kids. No, he was still drunk, and parental obligation was just not registering. At the same time, his constant drinking interfered — for the first time, I believe — with his judgment and creative prowess. Like a soused Man of Steel who felt invincible, he decided he could sell a client while completely wasted. As Bob Dylan famously sang, it’s not dark yet… but it’s getting there.
– Lang
Video of the Day: The Morning Benders, “All Day Day Light”
The Bay Area band goes through the season cycle in this video for their maddeningly memorable single from “Big Echo” — a song that will land more hooks in you than an exploding tackle box.
– Lang
Video of the Day: Das Racist, “Who’s That? Brooown!”
Himanshu Suri, Victor Vazquez and Ashok Kondabolu drop some 8-bit wisdom (well, maybe not wisdom, but certainly hilarity) in this Atari 5200 or TRS-80-level game-oriented video. You’re going to be singing the refrain all day, and you’re going to hate StaticBlog for it. Well, more.
– Lang
Video of the Day: Interpol, “Barricade”
So, all is forgiven: “Our Love to Admire,” the departure of Carlos Dengler and his superb hair, and that Julian Plenti/Chris Gaines stunt Paul Banks tried.
Welcome back.
– Lang
