“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
“Mad Men” Recap: 405, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”
The title for our latest “Mad Men” episode comes from a sociological screed about Japanese culture written by Ruth Benedict at the behest of the U.S. Government and published in 1946 at the dawn of the United States’ occupation of Japan. Considering that the bulk was written during the war, the chance that any meaningful on-the-ground work was done in the research phase of “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword” is unlikely. But beyond what was apparently some fairly prejudicial mumbo-jumbo, the takeaway for our anti-heroes at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is that the Japanese businessmen possibly bringing the Honda motorcycle account to Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) are part of a “shame-based society” as opposed to our own “guilt-based society.” Of course, this is broad-brush stuff because, as we’ll see in this episode, shame is a major motivator in how Betty Draper (January Jones) goes about her parenting, and it does form the foundation for Don Draper’s climactic clever maneuver against Cutler Gleason and Chaough.
As Episode 405 opens, Don (Jon Hamm) receives a call from The New York Times’ advertising reporter, who is doing some press release reporting on the idea that CGC is always in SCDP’s “rear-view mirror,” that they just nabbed Clearasil after SCDP had to drop the zit cream because of a conflict with the more-lucrative Pond’s account and that they are now competing directly over Honda. Don claims not to know who Ted Chaough is, but we all know this game. CGC doesn’t really come off as serious competition in this episode — more like carrion birds feasting on SCDP’s roadkill. But at the meeting table, the threat is taken seriously and the importance of landing Honda is apparent to everyone involved except Roger Sterling (John Slattery). Roger, the World War II vet, is dead set against courting Honda, since he served in the Pacific and, 20 years later, still hates the Japanese and, at least in this case, seems perfectly happy with SCDP’s dependence on Lucky Strike and Lee Garner Jr. Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) tells Roger that “the war is over,” and while it’s been some time since we, as viewers, have been invited into Cooper’s office, we know the guy has a serious aesthetic leaning toward Japan, what with his shoji doors and everything. Roger, it seems, is going to be an issue, since he apparently hasn’t met a Japanese stereotype or insult he didn’t like.
Don, meanwhile, is taking Bethany (Anna Camp) to Benihana of Tokyo (a business-and-pleasure field trip that will probably be about as enlightening as Ruth Benedict’s book), and so Phoebe (Nora Zehetner) is babysitting Sally and Bobby at Don’s man cave — she brings her nursing equipment for Bobby to play with, but Sally is extremely displeased that Don is abandoning them to go on a date. After Don leaves, Sally goes into the bathroom and hacks off a good portion of her hair in emulation of Phoebe’s close crop. Apparently Sally thinks that short hair will make Daddy notice her and she asks Phoebe, “Are you and Daddy doing it?” Phoebe is, of course, apoplectic and knows exactly how this is going to play when Don comes home.
At Benihana, Don and Bethany are getting their lesson in Japanese cutlery use and Bethany is complaining about her hair smelling like fried food when Ted Chaough (Kevin Rahm) shows up to do his own research and give Don a kick in the ribs. Don is clearly irritated — he tells Bethany that Ted is a “fly I keep swatting away,” but that isn’t near the irritation Don experiences when he goes back to the man cave (still no sex from Bethany, who is apparently the mother of one of the authors of “The Rules” and is holding out until she theoretically becomes the next Mrs. Don Draper) and discovers Sally’s new ‘do. As predicted, Don goes off on Phoebe and hands her some money with a “severance” package. Then Don takes Sally and Bobby to Betty and Henry’s chamber of horrors, where Betty greets Sally’s hair with a whopping slap in the face. Betty’s always been a bit of a Mommie Dearest, but in seasons one through three, she was more passively Hellish. These days, an active nastiness is taking over, with Betty taking out her hatred of Don on the children she had with him. Henry convinces Betty to take Sally to get the hair fixed (Hayley Mills is all the rage anyway) and let her go to her planned sleepover, to which Betty tells him, “You’re soft.” Well maybe, but Tony Stark would be soft compared to Betty these days.
Back at the office, the partners who are willing to conduct commerce with Japanese companies are meeting with executives from Honda, and everything is going swimmingly until Roger shows up and starts making dark jokes about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and blatantly insulting the men. This scene had my skin crawling: I lived in Japan for two years when I was in the military, and not only are new residents cautioned about making hateful comments like these, the rule is that you just don’t talk about it. No drunken apologies for Fat Man and Little Boy — just shut up, sailor. Anyway, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Roger has scuttled any chance SCDP had of landing the account, and Pete blows up at Roger for what he sees as a personal attack sabotaging Pete’s potential success, and Don is forced to not only intercede when Roger tries to physically attack our young weasel, but actually defend him.
And now things get a tad uncomfortable, even by “Mad Men” standards, as Sally sits on a couch at her sleepover and watches “The Man From UNCLE” while her friend Laura snoozes away. She gets a little, shall we say, flushed at watching David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin, hikes up her pajamas and is promptly caught by Laura’s mother, who yells at her and takes Sally home. Needless to say, Betty is unsympathetic, mainly because word will get out that her daughter’s some kind of fast floozy (shame, anyone?). Betty tells Henry about it, and they decide Sally needs professional help because, as Betty tells Sally, you’re not supposed to do those kind of things, not in private or in public. Of course, Betty made utilitarian use of a washing machine in season one, but that was different, right? Right?
Back at SCDP, the men haven’t received the customary gift from Honda, which Far East scholar Bert interprets as a sign that SCDP is expected to bow out of competition for the account. It should be pointed out at this juncture that Honda went into this brouhaha with ground rules, including a proviso that none of the competing agencies could spend more than $3,000 on developing a proposal and that no finished work could be presented. At first, Don proposes that SCDP should just shoot the moon and create a spot, but bean-counting Lane puts the kibosh on that idea. In the middle of all this, Betty calls Don, tells him about Sally’s little indiscretion and informs him that she’ll be taking her to a child psychologist, and in short order Betty starts blaming Don for everything because of what she perceives as a constant stream of nubile Manhattan flesh parading through the man cave. Don shoots back, telling her, “You brought another man into your house.” Betty justifies it by playing the marriage card, but in Sally’s eyes, that doesn’t amount to much. Henry’s an interloper who’s making an unholy two-backed beast with Sally’s mom, whether the State of New York recognizes the union or not.
So anyway, Don’s got a shame-related idea that might not win SCDP the motorcycle account, but could allow them to save face: make CGC think that SCDP is producing a TV ad, which will force Ted Chaough to produce his own spot, thereby violating the spirit and the letter of the competition. What follows is a great deal of stagecraft, with Joan offering a directorial job to a helmer who they already know is under contract to CGC and having Peggy wheel around a Honda motorcycle in the hallway. Word gets back immediately to Chaough, who comes up with a spot involving a motorcyclist driving through subway stations and then whipping off the helmet to reveal — gasp! — a beautiful “California” blonde. Peggy and Joey then rent out a soundstage across the hall from where CGC is shooting, and Peggy does donuts with the motorcycle, just to make noise.
Don and Faye Miller (Cara Buono) share the bottle of sake that Chaough sent over as a nastygram, and Don wonders aloud why normal human beings always feel the need to share their emotions — apparently Don isn’t just being guarded: he really doesn’t know. Faye tells him that it makes them feel better, and over the course of drinking the rice wine, she reveals that she’s not really married. The ring is a flim-flam thing that helps Faye avoid distracting or complicating conversations (like, for instance, this one) with brooding chauvinists at client firms. Meanwhile, Betty goes to see Sally’s new psychologist, “Dr. Edna” Keener (Patricia Bethune) who seems more interested in the twisted mind of Betty Draper than in her 10-year-old daughter. Betty tells Dr. Edna that she thinks Sally did this to punish her, and so when the doctor schedules Sally for four days a week of therapy (gah!), it’s obviously because of the solipsist/narcissist sitting across from her.
Fresh from unveiling his lame-ass ad, Ted Chaough gloats to Don, who he thinks doesn’t stand much of a chance since Don is clearly traveling light. In the meeting room, Don withdraws from the “bake-off” and hands the Honda guys a $3,000 check, telling them that he and his firm did not feel right competing when others in the running did not follow the rules and, by extension, the Honda executives received the presentation from CGC without rejecting it outright as a violation. The Honda executives have, in fact, been shamed thanks to Don’s clever little jujitsu against Chaough, who we presume will soon be reduced to drinking Aqua Velva out of a brown paper bag on Avenue A. The result? SCDP saves face, and while they will not be selling motorcycles, Honda informs them that they will be first in the running to do ads for Honda’s entry into the car business.
There was a lot of fun to be had with “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” mainly because the “bake-off” added a note of whimsy after three episodes of Don’s “Days of Wine and Roses” spiral, but it also brings up a fair number of questions about where things are going in Betty Draper’s world. After Sally’s “UNCLE” situation, Betty actually revealed to Henry that she’d gone to therapy “years ago,” telling him she “was bored.” It seems Henry got sold on the Betty Draper concept when he saw her in the showroom and never bothered to look under the hood, so to speak. As she continues her transformation into the mother and, eventually, wife from Hell, Henry looks more and more temporary. Don, meanwhile, confided with Faye Miller that he always feels “relieved” when he drops the kids off at Betty’s, but he misses them. Because Betty is such an important character on the show, there stands the possibility that, if Don doesn’t marry Phoebe, Bethany or Faye by season’s end, Don and Betty will later reunite for a resoundingly bad, hateful and sexless remarriage, just in time for Sally and Glenn to run away to Woodstock.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap: 404, “The Rejected”
Since the beginning of this season, most viewers have been pleased with the focus on the psychology of our anti-hero, the question of “Who is Don Draper?,” but a vocal portion of the fan base has complained that simply not enough attention is being paid to the business of advertising, and that some characters such as Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) have been missing in action. In the case of “The Rejected,” Pete is back in full force, but Roger Sterling takes a back seat, mainly because John Slattery directed the piece, but the mechanics of the advertising business get a front seat. The peculiar phenomenon of the focus group is something we’ve seen before on “Mad Men,” but not as a kind of Skinner Box in which questions about facial treatments are met with emotional meltdowns.
“The Rejected” begins with Don and Roger on conference call with Lucky Strike problem child Lee Garner Jr., and they’re going over some of the new restrictions that are in place for cigarette advertisements and brainstorming ideas to replace images of, say, teenagers smoking. Don is unusually distracted during the call, even for this season, and is relying on Allison (Alexa Alemmani) to give him cues to say vague things like “We’ll do our best” when his name is mentioned. In the middle of the call, he asks her one of those double-meaning questions posed by corrupt bosses: “Why is this bottle empty?” On the face of it, this is a stupid query that merits Allison’s actual response: “You drank it all.” What the boss really means is, “This bottle should never be empty. I should never be able to feel the lightness of a Jameson bottle emptied of its elixir. Ergo, get thee to the package store or no more $100 Christmas bonuses for you.”
Don is also bluffing his way through a conversation with Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) over her Pond’s Cold Cream concepts — he clearly has not looked at either of them. Faye Miller (Cara Buono) asks Don for some 18 to 25-year-old women from the secretarial pool and Don tells her, “Help yourself” — just as he does, I suppose. Meanwhile, Lane (Jared Harris) and Roger buttonhole Pete in the hallway to tell him he must cast off the Clearasil account he got from his father-in-law because the Pond’s people see it as a direct conflict. Don tires of Garner taking precious time away from him being in his cups and claims he sees a fire down by Radio City and stops the call, perhaps because SCDP are regularly called in as an auxiliary volunteer firefighting squad in midtown.
Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) lets Pete know he’s having lunch with Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), and tells him he should come, too. Considering that the old British regime put Pete and Kenny in direct competition, getting the two of them into a booth with drinks should be like shoving a ferret and a weasel into the same tube sock. Meanwhile, Peggy has a new friend in the building, Joyce Ramsey (Zosia Mamet, and yes, she is the daughter of David Mamet). She works at Life Magazine, she loves nude photography and would probably love Peggy as a female nude.
Pete meets his daddy-in-law at a bar, ostensibly to discuss Clearasil, but that doesn’t happen: he finds out that Trudie (Alison Brie) is with child and — Yikes! — hasn’t even told Petey yet. There is much stammering from Dad and Pete generally looks like he’s been slapped in the face with a flounder, but he’s happy, and he blows off the bad news, since it’s champagne all around and a bonus of $1,000 if it’s a boy, $500 if it’s a girl. Yes, the mid-’60s were a bit like feudal China. So Trudie is apoplectic when Pete gets home, because daddy called to warn her, but Pete is a happy boy. Tomorrow night, Yankee Pot Roast!
The focus group begins, and Faye runs the thing like she’s one of the girls, not like she holds a doctorate in psychology. Things are fine when the front office receptionist Megan is going on about her “French extraction” and how she does what her mother does with her facial ministrations — splash tepid water on her face, pat with her fingers and smile longingly at herself — but then one of the homelier secretaries, Dottie, starts talking about how taking care of her face never amounted to much, since her boyfriend left her high and dry with cold cream on her face a year ago after not really noticing her. Allison pipes up with “Sometimes it’s worse when they notice” — a comment that will certainly sting on the other side of the two-way mirror — and everything goes straight to Hell. Allison is weeping with big, body-wrenching sobs and has to leave the room. Peggy tries to console her, but then when Allison takes her sympathy for empathy, thinking that Don must have treated Peggy the same way when she worked as his receptionist, Peggy goes full-on cobra on her: “Your problem is not my problem, and honestly, you should get over it.”
On a personal/professional note, your StaticBlogger has been on Don’s side of the glass during a focus group, and while Faye insists that crying is a standard occurrence at these things, mainly what I saw were comments like, “Why did they review that CD? I don’t like music” and “I don’t eat that stuff” and “Why don’t you show what’s coming on the TV?” and “Can I have more of them chips?” No crying on their side. Plenty on my side.
So then we cut to Ferret vs. Weasel, and Cosgrove goes off on Pete for badmouthing him. Pete does his dishonest best to deny it, but finally owns up and apologizes to his moral equal, and it’s all good times, with jokes at the expense of the mentally disabled and everything.
Don returns to his office to find Allison, still very upset, and she tells Don she wants to move on, that there’s a job at a magazine where she could work for a woman. She asks Don for a letter of recommendation, and he’s got a ripping good idea: why doesn’t Allison just write her own damn letter of recommendation, with all of her “sparkling” great work denoted in beautiful courier type, and he’ll just sign it? This is, of course, insulting, because Don won’t even semi-literally lift a finger for a woman that he has literally screwed over. And she responds by throwing a bauble at him, breaking the glass in a couple of picture frames, and running out. Afterwards, Don hits the bottle hard, like he’s trying to prime a fuel pump, and Peggy’s looking over the wall as he self-medicates.
Life magazine girl shows up in the front lobby to tell Peggy about a party downtown, which is bound to have reefer and hippies. “It starts at nine. I’ll be there at 10,” she says, leeringly. Megan calls her pretentious, and Peggy agrees, approvingly. Meanwhile at Pete’s apartment, there is much rejoicing at the announcement of Campbellspawn, and Pete immediately starts playing extreme hardball with Trudie’s dad, telling him, “I’m done auditioning,” telling him he’s got to drop Clearasil and, as a bonus, he wants the account for all of Dad’s Vicks holdings, including Formula 44, the cough drops, the inhaler, and Vapo-Rub and everything else. Dad calls him a “son-of-a-bitch,” to which Pete, one of the most self-aware characters in “Mad Men,” just gives a hilarious shrug.
Don’s party time involves drinking in his office until the floor polisher gets too loud and forces him to go home to the man cave, while Peggy is “swellegant” and downtown, hanging out in a Warhol-like “factory” where men in bear outfits drink Budweiser and Life magazine girl makes a genuine play for Peggy, who politely rebuffs. Now at home, Don starts to write an apology letter to Allison, but when we starts to write “Right now my life is…” he rips the page out of the typewriter, because nothing is more anathema to Don Draper than an easy revelation. So it’s much easier to just fall down on the couch.
Back at the love-in, Peggy has a run-in with the nude photographer (he’s clothed, but he photographs nudes — tough modifier) and tells him they could use his talents at SCDP. He returns with some “selling my soul” jibber jabber, and then the whole soiree gets busted, with the NYPD bringing in paddy wagons. Peggy ends up spending some quality time in a hiding place with the party thrower, which could spell trouble for her fiance. He seems like too much of a simpering tag-a-long anyway, and Peggy seems destined for a full flirtation with the counterculture.
When Don returns to the office, he is greeted by his new secretary, Mrs. Blankenship, a relic from the old days, and by the old days I mean the 1880s or so. This is by Don’s request, mainly because in an apparent moment of clarity, he realizes that attractive women in their early 20s are a bit of a problem when they are in close proximity and filling his scotch glass. Pete delivers the good news about Vicks, Don gives him a semi-congratulatory “Keep up the good work,” and tells Mrs. Blankenship to reschedule Dr. Miller, but it seems his new receptionist might need to listen to life the Nu-Sound way.
Peggy is talking to her snide copywriting partner Joey (Matt Long). Now, Joey doesn’t seem long for SCDP, because he’s the most insubordinate little creep this side of Pete Campbell, only he voices his contempt for his superiors in the open air. When one of the receptionists passes the envelope for a congratulatory gift for Pete and Trudie, Peggy is surprised at the news while Joey says, “I would get her so pregnant.” Joey will be great at SCDP if the agency ever lands the Massengill account. Otherwise, I see him getting shanked.
Peggy congratulates Pete, and clearly there are still some feelings there, since Peggy goes back and bangs her head on her desk like Charlie Brown. Cut to Don’s office, and Faye Miller shows up because Mrs. Blankenship told her to get to his office immediately rather than simply rescheduling. Yes, this Blankenship phase of the Draper office is going to be ripe for 1970s-level situation comedy. Faye tells Don that Pond’s cold cream appeal should be linked to the prospects of holy matrimony, to which Don says “Hello, 1925.” Which is funny, because when those ideas are promulgated these days, we usually say, “Hello, 1955.” Don insists that Faye manipulated the group, but focus groups have been commonplace in his business for years, and he seems more upset that there were personal ramifications for him. But however he got to his decision, Don is right in the long term: that kind of approach seems terribly old hat — like something Queen Victoria might wear.
In the lobby, Pete is meeting with the old men from Vicks, while Peggy is going to lunch with Life Magazine girl and a bunch of her young friends from upstairs. The message seems fairly simple: Peggy is casting her lot with the next generation, while Pete will make his bones with the ruling class.
And speaking of old hat, Don goes home to his dreary man cave, where an old man is standing in the hallway in his underwear repeatedly asking his wife, “Did you get pears? Did you get pears? Did you get pears?” His wife says, “We’ll discuss it inside.” I think Don would have preferred Nurse Phoebe to be outside asking about the pears, but no such luck. He’s feeling the desolation of the world he’s made for himself.
There was a lot going on in “The Rejected,” mainly a sketch of the mid-60s as it is shifting to a youth and freedom culture over the one Faye Miller seems to be recommending. While there was no exploration of Betty Draper’s world, that seems to be coming next week, along with another, more difficult advertising conflict. This one did not have the grand sweep of last week’s “The Good News,” but it fleshed out the storylines of more characters. A smaller episode, but more densely packed, like a jar of cold cream.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap: 403, “The Good News”
Three episodes into Season Four of “Mad Men,” and all three belong in the series’ pantheon, but “The Good News” is easily the high water mark for the season to-date, mainly because the spiral that became so evident in “Christmas Comes But Once a Year” is accelerating but, for most of the hour, we’re having too much fun to even notice that Don Draper is falling ever more abyss-bound. While “The Good News” delivered some of the biggest laughs in the series’ history, those were set against the story of an anti-hero who cannot even do right by his mother figure, Anna Draper (Melinda Page Hamilton).
As we know from the Season Four episode “The Mountain King,” Anna was the wife of the real Don Draper, the one whose identity Dick Whitman borrowed in Korea, and Don/Dick has been supporting Anna since. It’s just before New Year’s Eve, and Don is leaving New York City and planning to go to Acapulco but with a short layover in Los Angeles. As usual, AMC throws red herrings out whenever they show scenes of the upcoming episodes: what looked like Draper asking his receptionist Allison (Alexa Alemanni) out for New Year’s Eve last week was just small talk before he leaves Allison and his Dirty Santa present to her in his ever-widening wake of destruction to light out for the West.
When we cut to Don in L.A., he’s rented a convertible and is cruising the PCH, which puts us in mind of “The Jet Set,” but there’s no joy — or Joy, for that matter — on tap for this trip. He arrives at Anna’s bungalow in San Pedro to find her hobbling around with a broken leg and being waited on by her sister Patty, whom she cannot stand, and her niece Stephanie (Caity Lotz), who is Anna’s best source of weed and an immediate point of interest for Don/Dick. Stephanie is a quick study of Don/Dick and she knows how to tweak his sorry ass, playing some pre-rock ‘n’ roll on the jukebox just to shine a spotlight on his increasing antiquity during the revolutionary 1960s. When he drives her home, Don/Dick makes the most pathetic and least persuasive play for the college girl in his history of seductions — for the love of all humanity, this man is off his game. Then Stephanie lowers the boom, possibly just to get Don/Dick off her: Anna broke her leg because she has bone cancer, and it has metastasized throughout her body. This being late-1964, a period when doctors felt perfectly fine not informing female patients of their true conditions (a la Betty and the psychologist), Anna is completely in the dark.
Don confronts Anna’s sister, who claims that they’ve done everything and seen everyone, which doesn’t seem likely — how would Anna not know that she was in an oncologist’s office? — to which Don/Dick makes a crack about Anna being treated by quacks in “Peedro.” That was an interesting little jab, and I’m wondering if it was, for Don/Dick, a little too geographically aware given that he’s not really an L.A. guy. Perhaps Matthew Weiner was providing a little grace note for Minutemen fans. Don seems to want to tell her and help Anna get the treatment she needs, but then seems to realize that that might entail commitment. When Anna wakes up, Don/Dick is painting a section of water-damaged wall, and she wonders if it all should be painted — after all, “a patch of new paint’s just as bad as a stain.” How true. This is a woman who might be the last person who can love Don/Dick unconditionally, and he’s telling her that he’s going to Acapulco. This turns out not to be true, which isn’t terribly surprising, is it?
So he returns to New York where Lane Pryce (Jared Harris, having his best hour of the series so far), is having his own meltdown. Earlier, we saw him whipping out his constant tight-money mantra on Joan, who was trying to sweet-talk him into some days off with her weasel-wannabe-army-surgeon husband so she can get pregnant before said-weasel is off in the Mekong Delta humming “Fortunate Son” to himself. Then he apologizes for being callous by sending flowers, but since he’s trying to appease both Joan and his haughty-snotty wife back in Blighty, he’s sending flowers left and right, but one of the receptionists switches the left and the right, with Joan getting long-stem reds with the note “Darling, I’ve been an ass. Kisses, Lane,” and the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Pryce getting a conciliatory bouquet and a “Joan, please forgive me” note. Yes, that will go swimmingly. Lane and Joan seem to bond over the battle for who gets to fire the secretary, but Lane is still a mess. Which is a perfect time for Don Draper to show up.
Lane has nothing to do, but he just got a bottle of fine Christmas booze from his alcoholic father (Jared Harris, you’ll recall, is the son of the late Richard Harris, he of “Camelot,” “MacArthur Park,” “Gladiator” and first Dumbledore fame, who was a champion drinker in a class of pros that included teammates Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole), and that means it’s middle-aged party time. As they sop up Dad’s fine whiskey, they contemplate going to a movie, and one of the choices is “The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg,” which would be a superb selection all around, except it’s not that kind of night, so Catherine Deneuve notwithstanding, they go see “Gamera,” because nothing rings in the New Year like a giant, fire-breathing turtle. Then they eat lots of beef and the increasingly soused Lane puts his steak down around his old fellow and declares loudly, in an exaggerated cowboy drawl, “I’ve got a big Texas belt buckle! Yee-haw!”
After that, they go see a comedian who may or may not be Lenny Bruce, then Don’s slap-happy hooker shows up with a friend for Lane, and it’s more middle-aged party time, with Don having the whole boozy gang back to his man-cave (Another great line from Don: “I think Norman Mailer shot a deer over there.”) where there is much carnal knowledge.
Although everything above sounds pitch-black, this was one of the funniest in the series and Harris finally gets his due with a showcase episode. But Weiner continues to make the points that are central to Season Four: as 1965 dawns, the old Draper magic only seems to work in the exciting world of advertising, while the charm isn’t really connecting elsewhere with the people in his life. He cannot go to California with an aching in his heart and be assured of immediately bedding a 20-year-old anymore. Something has to change, but if he could not step up for the one person who would step up for him, if only she could, there’s not much hope for Don Draper right now.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap: 402, “Christmas Comes But Once a Year”
Lest we forget, “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner worked on “The Sopranos,” and one of David Chase’s key tenets in approaching his anti-heroes was to remind us at jagged, irregular and usually shocking intervals what monsters we were watching. Sure, you could get all wrapped up in the “romance” of mob life and get a kick out of Paulie Walnuts and New Jersey guido life, but then just when you were starting to think, “Hey I’d like to have a beer and cigar with Tony and the boys down at Satriale’s Pork Store,” then Ralphie kills Bada Bing hostess Tracee in “University,” one of the most brutal episodes in the series’ history, and you’re brought back to Planet Earth.
So after last week’s season opener, “Public Relations,” in which Don Draper (Jon Hamm) seemed to reconcile his status as an advertising rock star after the Glo-Coat triumph, the bloom is off the rose a mere month later, as SCDP struggles with its accounts and plans a Christmas party that, to Roger Sterling’s eyes, seems awfully “convalescent home.” Their dependence on Lucky Strike and its magnate, Lee Garner Jr., is evident every time Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) opens his mouth — they account for either 69 or 71 percent of SCDP’s profits, and Roger hates how Pryce says “per cent.” When Garner announces that he’s coming to the soiree, Sterling immediately insists that the party transform from “convalescent home” to “Roman orgy.”
The problem is that Garner, ever the high roller, knows the power he has over SCDP, and the agency must do everything it can to diversify its roster so that it breaks from that dependency, and that includes bringing back poor old Freddy Rumsen, now a recovering alcoholic fully entrenched in AA and dragging with him a $2 million Pond’s cold cream account. Freddy is very much a relic, a point made by a swift and ugly debate with Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) over how to sell the goop.
But at the core of all this is the cratering of Don Draper. At the outset, Don and the rest of the staff are stuck in a meeting with consultant Faye Miller (Cara Buono), who asks the SCDP team to fill out personality profiles, including questions about their fathers. Yeah, right. Don checks out, citing an appointment, but Faye calls him on it later at the Christmas party, when she corners him in his office in a flirting-but-not-really posture. She’s researched Don, and while she probably doesn’t know about Dick Whitman, she knows enough about Don’s recent history. She tells him, “Don’t worry. You’ll be married again in a year,” and then twists the heel by saying that she forgot that people don’t like to think of themselves as “types.” But this entire episode is about telling the viewer what type of guy Don Draper is during Christmas 1964. He is the kind of guy who is dismissive of his neighbor Phoebe (Nora Zehetner of “Brick”) — strange, because she essentially looks like Natalie Wood in a nurse’s uniform, and unless Don’s afraid of nurses, that’s kind of a universal slam-dunk, especially in 1964. He only gets around to a pass after he’s too drunk to stand and she’s helping him out of his tie. But then Phoebe tells him her father was a drunk, which means Don is not really an appealing daddy figure at this particular moment.
So Don’s striking out until he gets absolutely blotto after the party, goes home and realizes he’s left his keys at the office. He calls his secretary Allison (Alexa Alemmani), who has become expert at taking care of post-divorce Don, buying Christmas presents for his kids and tidying up after his increasingly widening mess, to bring his keys. She takes time out from after-party drinks with co-workers (one of whom comments on Don’s miserable state of late). Allison, who seems to worship Don, becomes easy prey: she seems to think this completely unromantic come-on could turn into something nuptial-related. It’s a dank coupling, to be sure, and later at the office, Don refuses to acknowledge it. This is the “Sopranos” moment of the episode: Don is a right bastard to Allison, who goes back to her desk and starts typing. We hope it’s a resignation letter, but that does not appear to be the case.
What we have in “Christmas Comes But Once a Year” is a study of Don’s interaction with three women who aren’t his ex-wife or his daughter. One is his equal, one is the kind of smart and gorgeous party girl who used to be easy pickings, and the last is his sweet, insecure secretary. He won’t pick a woman who already knows who he is — that simply will not work for Don Draper — and he might have missed the window on Phoebe, possibly by a couple of years. Allison winds up being Don’s fallback position, and it looks like she will be back for more.
And we haven’t even gotten to Glen yet. Glen (played by Matthew Weiner’s son, Marten Holden Weiner) was the young boy whom Betty baby-sat while his mom went out to campaign for JFK in Season 2, and developed a creepy fixation on Betty. Well, fast-forward a couple of years and Glen is now fixated on the more age-appropriate Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) and well on his way to becoming a full-fledged sociopath. In an effort to impress Sally after seeing her out with Henry and Betty picking out Christmas trees, he and a toadie break into Casa Draper and ransack the place — all except for Sally’s room. He leaves a clue on her pillow, and she appears to be smitten by this new protector who, at least to her thinking, is doing more on her behalf than Daddy will.
Next week, it’s New Year’s Eve. Is Weiner going to take us through the calendar of holidays in Season 4? Possibly. We often structure our memories based on where we were on those key days, when everybody was either together or conspicuously apart. Right now, Draper looks to be in for several holidays in hell, but Weiner might be throwing us as off-balance as Don Draper was in his apartment hallway.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap: 401, “Public Relations”
In the ensuing time between the Season 3 finale and the beginning of Season 4, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has not only moved into swank accommodations at the Time-Life Building after a dramatic split with their British overlords, our anti-hero Don Draper has set TV advertising on fire with an ad for Glo Coat floor cleaner that looks a lot like a movie — something we all take for granted today, but when you consider how TV advertising through much of the ’50s and ’60s until the heyday of Stan Freberg was painfully on-the-nose, Draper is shaping up to be quite the revolutionary. But while he can sell a kitchen disinfectant, he seems incapable or constitutionally reluctant to sell himself: in an interview with Advertising Age, he comes off as anti-social and vapid, and the resulting article, intended to call attention to a conquering hero of Madison Avenue, paints Draper as a hollow man. His partners are not happy, and Bert Cooper gets his buddies at the Wall Street Journal on the phone.
The office dynamics are subtly different: Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) is growing into the revolutionary ad woman we suspected she would become, paying actresses to fight over a canned ham in an outer-borough grocery to build brand recognition — unlike Don, she seems well versed in the mechanics of public relations, even though she will see her stunt backfire slightly. But like Don, she seems ready to push the limits of her craft, as evidenced by the “John! Marsha!” Freberg bit that she and her new male assistant keep bandying around the office — proof that she digs the new breed.
In past seasons, Draper was more likely to kowtow to timid companies unwilling to go for the edge, but when executives at a swimwear company come in acting like the kind of milquetoast Victorians that put bloomers on piano legs, he won’t brook it. They keep insisting they are a “family company” and want a wholesome approach to selling two-piece bathing suits. Draper hits them with a print ad featuring implied nudity, and it predictably goes badly, but not only does Draper walk out, he practically runs back to give them the bum’s rush out of the office. Hell, it’s almost 1965 — get with the program, you sniveling weasels. Draper is establishing a new calling card with this: you come to SCDP if you want to win. If you’re not willing to play ball, quit taking up precious air in my office.
Elsewhere in Draperworld, it’s not so nice. Betty and her new husband Henry are having Thanksgiving with Henry’s family, and it’s basically a chamber of horrors, with the kids visibly scared out of their wits of Betty — Henry’s mother says as much later. Don is living in an apartment below his means — he wants to sell the Westchester house, but Betty is dragging her pumps on finding a new place. Even Henry tells her that Don’s in the right to insist they move out. Betty (January Jones) has never been this unsympathetic in the series’ history, and this looks to be how her character will play out. Meanwhile, Don is set up with one of Jane Sterling’s girlfriends, an extremely motivated, assertive date but one who isn’t willing to give it up for Draper unless he accedes to her schedule. She seems to have Don hooked. And speaking of hooked, Don is having a call girl over regularly to slap him around — certainly one way to deal with his guilt.
In the end, Draper goes along with the WSJ interview, and starts out with the anecdote about insisting that Pryce (Jared Harris) fire them all, and we all know this is going to make up for the desultory Ad Age piece. “Public Relations” was really one for the “Mad Men” pantheon, because even if it doesn’t set the tone for the season, it’s clear that the tone is being set for how advertising and the people who make it will evolve from here on out. A hell of a great start.
– Lang
