DVD Review: “True Blood: The Complete Third Season”
Rating: 81
As the third season of HBO’s “True Blood” begins, the supernatural population breakdown in and around Bon Temps, La., is roughly the same as that in Forks, Wash. — vampires and werewolves are occupying the same space as humans. The difference with “True Blood” is that there is more dramatic tension in every episode of “True Blood” than there is in any “Twilight” film. “True Blood” is a more visceral, sexualized and far funnier take on human-vampire attraction. It is not geared toward the exact same viewership as it’s teen-romance cousin, but creator Alan Ball (“Six Feet Under”) is producing a bloody good time, every time.
Much of Season 3 centers on the tense relations between vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) and the vampire king of Mississippi, Russell Edgington, played by longtime character actor Denis O’Hare with mincing, calculating evil. Having been kidnapped and pressed into service in Edgington’s court, Bill is separated from Sookie (Anna Paquin), who now finds herself introduced into the werewolf community by Alcide (Joe Manganiello) and slowly discovering that, given her mind-reading ability and newly revealed powers, she might not be entirely human. Meanwhile, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) must deal with the discovery of his deadbeat blood relatives, and Tara (Rutina Wesley) must fight off the advances of love-struck vampire Franklin (James Frain of “The Tudors”).
Based on Charlaine Harris’ “The Southern Vampire Mysteries,” “True Blood” maintains a canny balance between campy humor and genuinely affecting horror. The funny elements alternately make the supernatural sequences more effective and serve as a needed release valve. O’Hare provides a worthy successor to Michelle Forbes’ sexy-evil maenad, Maryann Forrester, and the entire cast is filled with dependable supporting actors such as Chris Bauer, Zeljko Ivanek and Evan Rachel Wood. “True Blood” has emerged as great summer viewing — bloody pulp fiction for viewers who prefer vampire stories with real stakes.
— Lang
“Friday Night Lights”: Countdown to the Final Season on April 15
At this point in the life of modern media, we honestly don’t know how people will watch television by the end of the decade, but we’re getting a good idea. In September 2010, I bought my first Blu-ray player to go with my first HD TiVo and my first HD television, and embedded on both the Blu-ray and the TiVo was access to Netflix, which spent a little over a decade as a great way to order DVDs online before it became the best premium channel in the history of premium channels. The instant viewing function, which rolled out in 2007 and has steadily grown its library, was first seen as a great alternative to pay-per-view and the logical first step toward the end of renting plastic discs. My first obvious flirtations with Netflix Watch Instantly were movies, but I soon found that the real value of this new media portal was in watching entire television series in giant binge sessions.
This is a long way of saying that I slept on the NBC series “Friday Night Lights” for four years, which by the way makes me a terrible person who didn’t support one of the greatest dramas in network television history until it was nearly over. And now, with the series starting its final season on NBC on Friday, April 15, I will try to make up for this terrible miscarriage of justice and taste.
In my defense, it only makes sense that I would not gravitate to “Friday Night Lights,” despite its near-universal acclaim. It is, after all, a series built around a fictional Texas town’s overwhelming obsession with high school football, and having grown up in Jenks, Oklahoma as a 130-pound dork who spent the first half of high school in marching band and the balance competing in competitive speech and debate tournaments, I mainly related to the downside of Friday night culture in small-town America. I did not look well upon the J.D. McCoys of the world, and they did not look well upon me as they were slamming me into lockers.
How I came around to “Friday Night Lights” was through “Parenthood,” producer Jason Katims’ strongly revised take on Ron Howard’s 1989 comedy-drama. Because I enjoyed Katims’ approach to dialogue — anyone who might check out a “Parenthood or “FNL” shooting script might not recognize much, since the actors are strongly encouraged to follow their clear eyes and full hearts when it comes to speaking parts. So after watching the fine performances Katims elicited from Peter Krause and Lauren Graham – no surprise in either case – but especially enjoying the recurring performances by “Friday Night Lights” key players Minka Kelly and Michael B. Jordan, I felt it was time to check out the show Katims ran for several seasons after Peter Berg took his 2004 feature film based on Buzz Bissinger’s book and brought it to the smaller screen.
I don’t mean this to sound like an advocacy piece for Netflix, but I brought up the service in the outset because I believe that people experience “Friday Night Lights” much differently if they essentially move to a Dillon, Texas of the mind for a few months. People who experienced “FNL” as a weekly show — 22 episodes in Season 1, a Writer’s Strike-abbreviated 15 for Season 2 and 13-ep seasons thereafter because only about 5 million people could be depended upon to watch at any given week — could see 43 minutes on a Friday, have a week off, then start over and wash, rinse repeat from ep 1 to ep 13. Then have 9 months to lay back, get obsessed with another show, find a new hobby and wait for another season to start. There was an opportunity to detach emotionally from “Friday Night Lights,” to let the sacrificial saga of Tim Riggins mellow and fall back into the inner recesses, to let Coach and Tami’s struggles with the Panthers and Lions go away for a while.
And then there is the immersion approach. A Netflix subscriber could watch all 76 episodes (presuming that Season 5 comes online) and never get a chance to recover. They experience these seasons as steamrollers of catharsis, and yet are also able to get past the show’s only real misstep (Landry and Tyra in the first half of Season 2, I’m looking at you, and will be getting back to you later) and move on to the more important issues: how does Smash Williams finally make it to college, will Matt Saracen be able to keep his commitments to both family and Julie Taylor while fulfilling his promise, and is there a way forward for Jason Street? The effect could could turn even the most hardened bastards into quivering piles of emo.
I spent most of my career as a self-styled cynic, probably because it was easier to take down someone than to build them up, so I when I read a titanium-clad cynic waxing teary over “Friday Night Lights,” it is clear that this is a show that can pierce even the most calloused heart. As Sean O’Neal wrote in The AV Club, announcing the premiere of the the final season of the series, “Fans of Friday Night Lights and other people with souls will be reassured to know that NBC has set a premiere date of April 15 for the show’s fifth and final season.” This is a writer who makes a living being paid to make fun of stories coming through the AP wire (and he does his job well), and even he had to throw his arms around Eric and Tami Taylor, Riggins, Vince Howard, possibly even Buddy Garrity.
Because the series bows on April 15, I will be devoting the next two weeks to analyzing this series’ most important elements and selling viewers on the notion of an all-enveloping binge session. Monday will be devoted to describing this town and its people, and how a series on mainstream network television managed to do the following:
1. Avoid easy blanket judgments of small-town life.
2. Develop storylines and characters that rarely followed easy trajectories.
3. Became the only broadcast network drama of the past decade that can stand alongside shows such as “The Wire” in terms of creating something that feels like real life.
What follows for the next two weeks is the story of how I moved to Dillon, Texas for four months.
Greyson Chance continues his ascent, performs Saturday in Edmond
Not all teen pop stars are created equal, and in the nine months since Edmond’s Greyson Chance achieved ubiquity with his heavily YouTube’d performance of Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi,” it is becoming increasingly clear that the 13-year-old singer-songwriter will not be following anyone else’s prefabricated paths.
Chance proved this on Monday, when he took a break from his tour with Miranda Cosgrove to perform on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.”
Without question, Fallon is running the best nighttime music lab on network television. With Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and the Roots as the house band, the show isn’t in the business of suffering lightweights.
Chance took the stage with a full band to perform his single, “Waiting Outside the Lines,” a mature piano-rock ballad that clearly aims for all ears, not just young ones, and he earned respect. Not only did he attack “Waiting” with skill and passion, Chance proved he could command a stage, stepping away from the piano midsong and belting it out to the audience.
Shortly after Chance’s performance, ?uestlove — whose Twitter account identifies him as “your favorite twitterer’s favorite music snob,” took to social media to fully endorse the young star to his 1.4 million Twitter followers.
“Man. @greysonchance gave us an engaging and compelling performance on @latenightjimmy. I co-sign this kid,” ?uestlove tweeted.
The drummer/bandleader does not hand out compliments lightly. A tweet like that holds power. Sure, Chance gained millions of pop fans with his strong voice and piano work last year, and that is no mean feat. But ?uestlove’s endorsement means credibility in the minds of people who might not otherwise pay attention, and Chance earned it.
Since the YouTube frenzy and his subsequent appearances on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, Chance has returned home several times, performing at his brother Tanner’s fraternity at the University of Oklahoma and appearing last month at a family-oriented inaugural event for Gov. Mary Fallin. But this weekend, the former Cheyenne Middle School student will return to Edmond for two special benefit concerts.
Chance performs at 1 and 7 p.m. Saturday at Edmond Santa Fe High School, with proceeds benefitting the Children’s Miracle Network. This week, in an e-mail interview, he talked about how his busy performance schedule and the process of recording his forthcoming debut album improved his stage presence and musical ability.
“I can tell my songwriting ability is getting stronger as I’m writing more,” he said, e-mailing from Atlanta. “Of course, being on tour I’m improving as a performer. I love feeding off the energy of the crowd. It’s like artist ‘boot camp’ — my writing, my performing, my vocal abilities will all improve the more I practice.”
Chance said the album is progressing and will arrive later this year with a pop-rock sound that he has previously compared to Coldplay.
“The story behind the album is about going through a heartbreak,” he said. “I can’t wait for everyone to hear it.”
As for the performances and meet-and-greet appearances at Edmond Santa Fe, Chance doesn’t want to give anything away. It’s all for a good cause.
“I have a couple surprises for the show,” Chance said. “You will just have to come to see what they are.”
One element that will not be a surprise: Greyson Chance is not the standard teen idol. He is taking chances.
IN CONCERT
Greyson Chance
With: At Long Last, Theater Breaks Loose and Sherree Chamberlain.
When: 1 and 7 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Edmond Santa Fe High School, 1901 W 15, Edmond.
Tickets: $20 to $30 for the concerts, $25 for the meet-and-greet appearances.
Information: www.stubwire.com.
Olivia Munn Gets “Perfect” on NBC
Olivia Munn stars in two television series and graces the current cover of Maxim, but eight years ago, armed with a freshly earned journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma, Munn was slugging it out for 12 hours a day on the assignments desk at KJRH-TV in Tulsa.
And she was counting the minutes until she could leave.
“I was killing myself,” said Munn, who can be seen as Leigh on the series premiere of “Perfect Couples” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday on KFOR-TV Channel 4. “I sat at the assignment desk listening to the scanners. I promised my mom I would work someplace for a year. A year to the day, I walked out of that place. I was literally logging in time like I was in prison.”
Just three years after packing it in at KJRH and leaving for California, Munn fully established herself as the geek goddess extraordinaire on G4′s “Attack of the Show,” a live daily series in which she and co-host Kevin Pereira spotlighted new technology, games and pop culture. It is where Munn earned a reputation for deadly comic timing and for knowing and loving what guys like. In one famous segment, she appeared at the 2009 Comic-Con in San Diego dressed like Princess Leia in her metal bikini — a move guaranteed to turn the brains of most Jedi knights into useless ooze.
Munn left her perch at “AOTS” in 2010, but only because her time is in short supply these days. Last year, she became the “Senior Asian Correspondent” for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (a nod to the Chinese half of her ancestry), and when “Perfect Couples” creators Jon Pollack and Scott Silveri asked for casting ideas, Munn received high praise from experts in the field.
“Scott and Jon asked Tina Fey and Robert Carlock at ‘30 Rock’ for recommendations of who they thought should be in a show, and both Tina and Robert recommended me,” Munn said during a recent phone interview. “So, Scott and Jon wrote the role with me in mind after seeing my stuff.
“They were actually telling me a story yesterday — they said, ‘We were the guys who didn’t want to hire you based on your looks. We hired you because we heard you were funny — we’re the only guys in the world who didn’t know you were on the cover of Maxim,’” she said.
Apparently, Silveri and Pollack were not among the nearly 200,000 people following Munn on Twitter, where she regularly posts the where, when and how of her life and career, along with Twitpics that stoke the fires of geek love among her fans. With the two series, a role in the upcoming Sarah Jessica Parker film, “I Don’t Know How She Does It” and tweeting all her in-between moves, Munn is constantly in the thick of things. She doesn’t know how she does it, but she knows why.
“You know what it is? It’s just being so appreciative. This business can be so arbitrary and success is so hard to attain and can be fleeting,” Munn said. “When you’re out here and you see how hard it is to get these opportunities, when they come around you just want to put all the effort to make sure you can do it all and not say no to anything.
“For me, to be able to have an NBC show and do ‘The Daily Show’ and being able to start a movie, there is nothing else I would want to do. I would be devastated to lose any of them,” she said.
Born Lisa Olivia Munn in 1980, she spent her first eight years living in Oklahoma City before life in a military family took her to Tokyo. At 16, after her parents divorced, Munn moved back to Oklahoma City and attended Putnam City North High School for her junior and senior years before enrolling at OU.
During her studies, Munn held an internship at KWTV Channel 9, and it started on one of the worst days in that station’s history: Jan. 26, 2001, when the station lost its longtime sports anchor, Bill Teegins.
“My first day was the day of the Oklahoma State basketball plane crash, and Bill was on it,” she said. “I just remember having to call his cell phone, over and over, and it went straight to voice mail every time.”
After her one-year stint at KJRH, she moved to California and got a gig doing women’s basketball sideline reporting for Fox Sports. Meanwhile, she was going to auditions, appeared in some direct-to-DVD schlock as Lisa Munn (she’s “Girl No. 1” in 2004′s “Scarecrow Gone Wild”) and eventually earned her spot as the most visible personality on G4. Her four years on “Attack of the Show” were marked by Munn’s unique fearlessness when it came to comedy and her tongue-in-cheek willingness to exploit her looks.
“That’s the beauty of live television,” she said. “To many people, they curb back and are so afraid of offending anyone that they, I think, end up offending everyone by being vanilla and boring. I was just trying to be very honest and real and have the same humor that I have around my friends. It was really big for us that we wanted … it to feel like you were still hanging out with your friends. It was one of the best experiences of my career.”
Her willingness to go all out is on full display on the February 2011 cover of Maxim — the image was provocative enough to receive denunciations from the conservative Media Research Center. (“You know, I think these people need to find a hobby, because I can’t be their hobby anymore,” she said of the brouhaha.) But for Munn, this is par for the course: a Jan. 13 Twitpic of her eating cookies backstage at “The Late Show with David Letterman” caused almost as much palpitation. As Entertainment Weekly noted, “Poor girl can’t even eat a cookie without causing a scene.”
But frequently, quietly and without causing a scene, Munn comes back to Oklahoma to visit her mother, who lives in Nichols Hills. She said she is proud to be from here, and even told Letterman that when she moved back to Oklahoma City, Munn found that her Tokyo-bred sense of style was outpaced by her new classmates at PC North.
“Wait a minute,” Letterman said. “You’re telling me that Oklahoma, in terms of fashion and culture, is more advanced than Japan? Well, that’s food for thought.”
Munn said she will continue to stay busy: she has already shot 13 episodes of “Perfect Couples.” It’s a work ethic she adopted during those days of having her ears glued to police scanners in Tulsa.
“I decided that I would never be the reason that I heard ‘No,’” she said.
– Lang
Nerdage and StaticBlog Crossover Sweeps Special: Casting “Wonder Woman” — Eliza Dushku or Tanit Phoenix?
Like McLean Stevenson and Conrad Bain, you just can’t keep us from hopping from “Hello Larry” to “Diff’rent Strokes” and back, or something like that. Anyway, it’s been a long time since Nerdage and StaticBlog have done one of these completely gratuitous casting debates, so let’s get right to it:
Deadline reported recently that David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal) is developing Wonder Woman as a possible TV series. Given the success of the 1970s version, and Warner’s difficulty getting the project off the ground as a feature film, this makes some sense. Also, with “Smallville” coming to an end, the CW could use another superhero anchor, couldn’t it?
Two of the names that have floated around as rumored candidates for the Wonder Woman role are Eliza Dushku (“Dollhouse”) and South African model Tanit Phoenix.
StaticBlog: Eliza Dushku gets nerd points in all kinds of ways, but mainly because of her association with Joss Whedon, a man who tried in vain to get Wonder Woman’s plane off the ground before giving up three years ago. (He wanted Cobie Smulders for the role. I “How I Met Your Mother” has missed all kinds of opportunities to put her in a WW costume for a Halloween episode, and I sincerely hope they do it before Mosby meets their mom.) At any rate, she was Faith on “Buffy” and “Angel” and did “Dollhouse,” so my feeling is that Dushku is the heir apparent.
Besides, she simply does not have that much on the table right now other than a guest spot on “The Big Bang Theory” (along with every other geek god and goddess out there) and a rumor that she’s signed for “Ghostbusters III.” Besides, she could totally pull that costume off.
On the other hand, there’s Tanit Phoenix, who has appeared in such classic fare as “Kamasutra Nights” (Netflix, you know what to do) and something called “Crazy Monkey Presents Straight Outta Benoni,” in which she played someone named “Megan Alba.” So, apparently she’s a name associated with quality, and she’s signed to be in “Death Race 2,” so we’ll soon see the full breadth of her dramatic skills. On the other hand, cursory research on Google Image indicates she would wear the costume well, but physical perfection is not all that is needed to launch “Wonder Woman” successfully. You also have to bring some cache to the table.
Advantage: Eliza Dushku
Nerdage: Dushku is reportedly interested in the role, and she’s shown her ability to carry a TV series: Tru Calling and Dollhouse were squarely on her shoulders. Wonder Woman will probably need someone who’s down with the every-day reality of filming a TV series. She’s only 29, so, while she’s been acting for many years, she’s could still have a decently long run as the Amazonian princess. Her role as Faith in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” makes her a well-known quantity to the geek demo, as well.
South African model Tanit Phoenix has appeared in “Lord of War” and is filming “Femme Fatales” for HBO, reportedly as the narrator of the Twilight Zone-like series. So her career is building . Depending on which internet site you believe, she’s either 26 or 30, so, she’s in the neighborhood of the age Lynda Carter was when she donned the star-spangled outfit. While I’m not totally sold on her, she looks the part, and she may have gotten the attention of the right people at WB. Still, I’d vote:
Advantage: Eliza Dushku
– Lang and Price
“Mad Men” Recap: 413, “Tomorrowland”
So, a few months of our time, about a year in “Mad Men” time and 13 episodes ago, a newspaper reporter asked the question, “Who is Don Draper?” Each episode has offered part of that answer, but with “Tomorrowland,” we learn that Don Draper is exactly who he was before this extraordinary season: a man most comfortable selling a sweet, unrealistic dream, even if he’s the customer. We’ve seen him flirt with the full embrace of life in the real world, even if that embrace was not his idea, but as we’re soon to find out, Don Draper’s “Tomorrowland” is really Fantasyland, and this episode is Mr. Draper’s Wild Ride.
At the man cave, Faye Miller is leaving to go to work, and Don is lying in bed, sweaty and freaking out about the cratering going on at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, and telling Faye that he’s got “a sick feeling” in his stomach. Faye, who at this point is probably the third or fourth most knowledgeable living person when it comes to Dick Whitman’s life, tells him he might feel better if he can settle with the past, acknowledge who he really is and move on into a brave new world as a Richard Donald Draper Whitman kind of guy. But Don is going to California with an aching in his heart, and Faye is not part of the equation. “I’m going to miss you,” he tells her. We all will.
As morning commences at the gleaming SCDP offices, Joan is pushing the mail cart through the empty expanse with a slight scowl on her face when she reaches Lane’s office. Lane is looking rather smug and self-satisfied as he hands her an envelope and tells her that, by unanimous decree, the partners have decided to make her Director of Agency Operations, which is essentially what she’s been doing anyway. Then he tells her that there will not be a pay bump commensurate with her now-official new title, and she tells him, “Well, it’s almost an honor.” With Fortunate Son off at the M*A*S*H unit and an ongoing development going on from within, Joan could use the extra cash, but no one at SCDP is taken for granted quite like Joan Holloway.
Well, maybe SCDP will be able to afford a pay bump for Joan sometime in the near future — if they remember to do it. This is because Don and Pete are meeting with the American Cancer Society and pitching an idea for anti-tobacco messages. The key PSA would feature parents and children doing family things, but always with cigarettes in the hands and the mouths of the parents. It would run during “American Bandstand” and it might have a good beat and you could dance to it, but the message would resonate: cigarettes would always get between them and their parents, the cigarettes will win, and their parents will die. The board questions it, pointing out that teens hate their parents, but Don — and this is classic Don — tells them that teenagers are sentimental: “Have you heard their music?” (cue laughter). They are mourning the loss of their childhood, and they are now feeling their mortality.
Back at SCDP, Roger yells, “Did you get Cancer?” Ah, the hilarity of the domestic Silver Ferret. Don and Petey are getting happy as they discuss how to exploit the ACS board for ad dollars, and they lean on Ken Cosgrove to talk his future father-in-law into bringing Dow Chemical to the agency. Kenny’s not on board: he tells them that his fiance is his life — “literally my life” — and that he will not let business jeopardize his relationship and that he’s not Pete. Petey gets one of his faces and shoots fire out of his eyeballs at Ken.
Up at Ossining, Glen shows up as the Salvation Army is carting out some furniture. He asks Carla if he can say goodbye to Sally. Carla is not wild about letting Krazee-Eyez Killa into the house, but since Betty is at the store, she figures it can’t do much harm. Yeah, whatever. So Glen goes up to Sally’s room and they have kind of a sweet goodbye — at first, when Sally tells him she’s going to California, he thinks it’s permanent, but when he finds out she’s just moving to Rye (home of Playland), he’s all cool with that, because in two years he’ll be driving a muscle car to Rye and threatening Sally’s virtue. But then when Glen leaves, he runs into his arch-nemesis. Betty screams at him, and he hits her hard with the cold-ass truth: she is against anyone else being happy because she’s personally incapable of true happiness. Well, that and Glen gives her the super-creeps. Carla probably should have left the room right about then, because Betty would have fired all the appliances if that’s all she had around her. So Betty fires Carla, the woman who raised her children.
So Don and his meddling accountant are discussing the sudden influx of cash he’s experiencing through the magic of real estate sales: the house in San Pedro and the Draper-Francis homestead in Ossining, which means Don can finally buy someplace to live other than his Village man-cave. But then Betty calls to tell him that Carla is canned, which means she cannot go to Cali with Don and the kids. Don goes bonkers at Betty’s summary judgment on Carla and insists that she be rehired for the trip, but Betty says Carla will “poison the well” — as if the well was all potable and tasty. Don has meetings, he tells her, and without Carla’s help it will be impossible to do business. So Betty — and this is rich, kids — tells him he should not take them, that “they’re used to it.” She’s played that one before, but never more inappropriately or with more bratty spite than here, since this is all her doing. That one belongs in the hall of fame.
Across the hall, Joyce (who’s really just there to be deus ex machina) comes to Peggy’s office to introduce Carolyn Jones Like Morticia (Cassandra Jean), a model who was just fired off a Topaz Pantyhose ad, along with the agency producing it. Harry is oh-so comforting and solicitous to the comely Carolyn Jones Like Morticia, but Harry is a schmuck and it’s not really working, and besides — there’s money to be made here, damn it! Peggy and Kenny decide it’s time to get themselves to Topaz and collect some pantyhose money.
As for California, Megan the Sex Robot has been checking into child care for Don’s trip, and she’s found that the hotel has services to handle the older kids but won’t take care of the baby, and vice versa — nobody wants chocolate in their peanut butter. So Don has a really great, Edison-inventing-the-light-bulb epiphany: why not pay MSR to take care of his kids in Cali? I mean, talk about all the comforts of home! MSR’s happiness sensors light up like her beloved Paris.
Kenny tells Peggy that the Pantyhose Men were impressed that he had found out so quickly about the failed campaign and agreed to take pitches. Meanwhile, in the sunny funland of California, Don comes in from a long day of business meetings and sees Megan the Sex Robot sitting on the bed with the kids, whom she’s taught a delightful French children’s song — one that sent little Eugene to slumberland. Don tells her, “You’re like Maria Von Trapp,” and in case you’ve forgotten, “The Sound of Music” was like “Inception” and “Toy Story 3″ rolled into one box office extravaganza in 1965, but it was also a kind of male wish-fulfillment fantasy: a virginal nun-wannabe comes to take care of the children, teaches them to sing and keeps them out of Daddy’s hair while he’s off at war — what was not to love? But Julie Andrews had none of the expert-engineered seductive power of Megan the Sex Robot. She knew he’d love seeing her lead the children in lilting Francophone song. Everything is going according to plan.
So then Don takes the kids with him to check out Anna’s house, where Stephanie is getting everything packed up. Sally notices the “Dick + Anna, ’64″ painted below the pretty flowers on the wall, and asks Don/Dick who “Dick” is. He tells her it is him, that is “my nickname sometimes.” Well, I’m sure some people have called him Dick other than Anna, but it wasn’t because he was their friend. As a lovely parting gift, Stephanie gives Don a tiny blue box. It is a solitaire diamond ring — the ring that the real Don Draper gave Anna before the Korean War. Oh yes, rubbing hands together in mock movie villain pantomime, everything is going according to plan.
Don is sitting on the bed with the kids, planning the next day’s trip to Disneyland when Megan shows up at the door with her old French Canadian college friend — they’re going to the Whisky a Go Go, possibly to see the Doors or the Lovin’ Spoonful. But that’s nothing like the rocking taking place in Ossining, where Henry is getting drunk and yelling at Betty for firing Carla. Betty protests, telling him they need a fresh start, but Henry says “There is no fresh start” — that “lives carry on.” She’s shocked — shocked! — that Henry isn’t on her side. Henry, who is showing a promising streak of nihilism that might save him in the end, tells her “Betty, no one is on your side.”
So now the kids are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of anthropomorphic mice dancing in their heads. Speaking of the Lovin’ Spoonful, Don hears Megan the Sex Robot return from the Whisky (it had only been open about a year and a half at this point), and one suspects Megan wanted Don to know she was back. He knocks on the door under the pretense of not being able to watch TV with the kids asleep, and wondering if she might be willing to help him plan the Disneyland trip. She makes googly eyes and jokingly and saucily asks if she should be a part of such “high-level discussions.” He’s in, and very much like Flynn.
In short order, after some discussions of her pain-in-the-ass college friend and MSR’s teeth(!), they’re kissing. MSR asks, “Are you sure we should be doing this?” But Don hasn’t stopped thinking about her, he says, and now he can’t stop doing anything else. Bwah-ha-ha-haaaa. Everything is going according to plan.
Now, as juxtaposition, Betty is all alone — nobody is on her side except her, because she’s lying on her side, in the fetal position, on Sally’s twin bed. Oh, to be young again and have a daddy figure to take care of everything and not yell at me when I’m being unbearable and impetuous. Well, it seems that papa’s got a brand new bag.
So, in post-coital repose, Don asks MSR if this is how she imagined things turning out. Her Nexus-6 circuit board sends a positive message, to which Don responds by pointing out that Megan knows nothing about him. This would be a perfect time for Edward James Olmos to drop an origami crane on the bedside table and yell, “But then again, who does?” But Megan says she knows enough: “You have a good heart and I know that you’re always trying to be better,” she says. Don wants to know if this is just a one-off, like their roll on the mid-century modern furnishings in his office. She assures him that there will not be a malfunction.
This is not the only seduction going on: the Topaz guys are being sold by Kenny and Peggy, who was smart enough to wear the product to the meeting and had some strong ideas — the hilariously named Art Garten likes what he’s hearing. But at the Johnie’s Coffee Shop at Wilshire and Fairfax (home of your favorite indie-film restaurant scenes), Sally’s not liking what Bobby’s selling (something about her being fat), and she knocks over a milkshake. Don reacts loudly, proving there’s not much air between his and Betty’s styles of parenting, but Megan Von Trapp the Cybernetic Sex Nanny has things under control, insisting there’s no use yelling over spilt milkshake. Hmm, Don thinks: this one can shield me from the headaches of parenting, and she’s expertly programmed to fulfill my fantasies — I’ll take her!
We then quick-cut back to New York. Don is sitting at the foot of the bed while MVTCSN is recharging. When she awakens, Don tells her that he’s been awake for a few hours, and could not sleep because he’s cannot stop thinking about her and “I feel like myself when I’m with you,” whatever that means. But our favorite ad man really pours it on, and when he says “I am in love with you, Megan,” it’s probably the exact way he imagines she would like to hear it. He brings out the little blue box, and asks her to marry him. She looks confused, but again, everything is going according to plan. She says yes, and if this were a much lesser show, we’d be hearing the echoing voice of Faye Miller right now: “You’ll be married again within the year.” At first, he tells Megan the ring had been in his family for awhile, but that’s, of course, not exactly true, but by Don’s standards and situation, it’s not exactly untrue, either. As Don gets up, Megan lies there like a ’60s film siren, her eyes peeking over the sheets, her smile fully visible nevertheless. Mission accomplished.
At SCDP, Don summons the Silver Ferret, Lane, Petey and Joan to his office to announce that he and “Miss Calvet” will be getting married. Of course, no one knows this name of French extraction, so Joanie pipes up to tell them it’s Megan. She’s invited in, prances over to Don in a slinky red dress as part of the coronation, and after the applause, the Silver Ferret tells Don that this is how their kind live. Indeed, Don has followed in Roger’s footsteps by marrying his secretary, and when I say “his secretary,” I mean “Don’s secretary.” Ida Blankenship died for you, Megan!
Kenny tells Peggy that the word from Art Garten is awesome — they loved the second and fourth ideas, and they want to see something in a week. They go to Don’s office, where there is much rejoicing. Don is as ebullient as he’s ever been this season as he congratulates the two, but Peggy is bewildered by the new reality: Don has thrown over her idol, Dr. Faye Miller, for this year’s model. Don thinks he’s being crafty and complimentary by telling Peg that MSR “has the same spark” as she does, and that Megan looks up to her, but Peggy just sees it as Megan taking the old way to success while Peggy is in the trenches.
Megan then tells Don that Faye has called again. Don has been ducking her, but Megan tells him that waiting will not make things easier. Meanwhile, Peggy goes to Joan’s office and the two commiserate about the impending nuptials. Joan tells Peggy that she’ll probably have to train Megan as a copywriter, and Peggy gripes that the engagement completely overshadowed the Topaz signing, which is the company’s first new business since losing Lucky Strike. Sharing a smoke, Joan tells Peggy that she learned a long time ago that she should not try to gain all her satisfaction in the workplace, to which Peggy retorts, “That’s bulls—,” and they laugh, finally finding some common ground after the unpleasantness a few episodes ago.
And now comes “the talk.” Don is on the phone with Faye, asking if she’ll meet him for coffee. She’s not buying it: Faye knows what is coming, and she does not want to sit through coffee after he breaks up with her. When he tells her he’s met someone, he’s fallen in love and he’s getting married, she starts to cry, asking who it is. He asks her, “Does it matter?” as if he already knows how little regard she’ll have for his choice in life. She tell him, “I hope she knows that you only like the beginnings of things.” They hang up, and she sobs uncontrollably. She might have been smart, accomplished and seductive in her own right, but Dr. Faye Miller, at least in some ways, overplayed her hand. She wanted Don to embrace the truth, and that was a bridge too far. It was far too easy to marry someone who has cartoon bluebirds draping daisy garlands over her when she rises every morning.
So Joan calls Frank Burns over in Vietnam to tell him about the engagement and everything else that is happening, and he asks her when she’s going to tell the office about her own news: the upcoming baby. Yes, Joanie’s going to give birth to a beautiful baby, and it’s going to be tough for Frank Burns when said baby comes out of the womb with silver hair, begging for a martini.
It is now 7 p.m. in Ossining, N.Y., and the house where Don and Betty Draper (but mostly Carla) raised their children is empty except for Betty, who is standing in the kitchen, primping for what is supposed to be a surprise encounter with Don. Don is there to meet the Realtor ™ for a walk-through, but Betty claims she forgot a few things. Don supposes she also forgot the Jameson he kept over the oven, and they share a drink out of one of the kids’ duck-shaped plastic cups. Betty starts to reminisce with Don about the old days, then lets loose that “things aren’t perfect.” Oh, but they could be, couldn’t they, Betty? Grace Kelly back with her prince?
But then, this isn’t a fairy tale, Gracie. Don tells her that he met someone and he’s getting married. She assumes that it’s Megan, since she went with him to California. Well, that didn’t go well. Betty picks up her stuff and goes to Rye, and Don lies in bed, with Megan recharging next to him, thinking about the life he left and the one ahead of him in Season 5.
All told, this was the greatest season of “Mad Men” to date. Recently in the comments section, I predicted that the next season will likely begin in 1967, with Don and Megan the Sex Robot-Draper in their beautiful new home in Connecticut. My first thought was that they would move to a stately, two-story Colonial on a large tract, but given the glass-and-metal sensibilities of the Time-Life Building and his new bride, I think he’s building a maze of modernity out there. Perfect for ice storms and key parties in a few years.
It will be a long time before we recap “Mad Men” again, but I’ve enjoyed this greatly. Next week: “The Walking Dead” begins. I’ll see you here.
– Lang
“Mad Men Recap: 412, “Blowing Smoke”
As “Blowing Smoke” commences, Don is taking his secret meeting with Heinz — the one Faye violated her “Chinese Wall” to set up, and things are not going swimmingly. This Mr. Geiger is not a ketchup man: he is a disgruntled baked beans executive who pines for the days when his product was No. 1 at the company, but ever since World War II and everybody started having backyard cookouts, salted, sugared and vinegared tomato gunk is king. He’s not happy with how Ketchum did such a straightforward campaign for beans, and while he understands that “there is a time for beans and a time for ketchup” (that would be 5:17 p.m. and 5:33 p.m., respectively), he wants some zip, though he’s worried that a humorous ad for beans will ultimately result in the campfire scene from “Blazing Saddles.” Geiger is hilarious: he thinks pickles are funny in a way that legumes could never be, and he’s probably right — this is a guy who lives and breathes beans, vinegars and sauces.
So Geiger seems “all in,” except he needs six months before he jumps, and Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce doesn’t really have six months — they might not have six weeks. Don even offers him a break on the standard commission, but Geiger can smell the sweat and advises Draper, a man whose creativity he values, to let the account execs chase the new business. Geiger might be on to something — Draper’s idea of having creative keep the accounts happy while the brass shakes the trees for new business looks a little desperate, like they don’t have anybody to go into the field. Unfortunately, that could be the new reality at SCDP.
At the former Chez Draper in Westchester County, Sally expresses some interest in actually having family dinners, as opposed to the three kids all sitting around at 5 p.m. and eating Spaghetti-Os and Betty and Henry having dinner after the underage borders have gone to bed. Betty, who likes kids about as much as people think she does (more on that later), doesn’t have much personal enthusiasm for the concept, but she sees it as evidence that Sally is starting to accept Henry. What’s more likely is that Sally will settle for anything that remotely resembles a family unit at this point and Betty’s strategy of shielding Henry from what she sees as an annoyance is keeping the new Francis family from cohering.
Back at SCDP, Geoffrey Atherton, Faye’s boss, is proposing that our heroes take a meeting with Phillip Morris. Apparently the cigarette company is preparing to launch a smoke aimed at women (Virginia Slims), and they’re looking for fresh ideas for marketing their new, pretty nicotine delivery system. Atherton says he already has a meeting set and tells them that tobacco is the ideal boyfriend for SCDP, because they’re just that “kind of girl.” And Bert Cooper tells Atherton they’ll listen more than they’ll talk — like a “good girlfriend.” Okay… But even with this potentially good grab, our favorite Limey bean counter, Lane, is worried about making payroll and tells Petey that cuts are in the near future.
In an unkempt residential alleyway in Ossining, Sally and Glen are comparing notes on their respective child psychologists and the whole thing looks like a parody of mid-century teenage courtship, with Glen wearing his football uniform and lounging on the grass while Sally hangs on his every word — Glen comes on like George Costanza in the “Seinfeld” episode titled “The Little Kicks,” in which he’s wearing a letterman’s jacket and leaning on a muscle car to impress Elaine’s assistant, Anna. He’s offering her smokes, asking if she “kisses her mom’s ass” like Glen always counseled her — as Glen tells her, Betty “doesn’t like kids.” This is true, but above all other kids, she really doesn’t like Glen. They’re 10, but it’s like “Rebel Without a Cause” staged by the “Bugsy Malone” crew.
[UPDATE: According to reader/poster Elizabeth, Glen Bishop is 14 and Sally Draper is 11. According to the incredibly detailed "Mad Men" wiki, Elizabeth is absolutely correct -- Glen was born in 1951. Not able to verify Sally's age, but in the spirit of community and with the understanding that "Mad Men" viewers sweat the details, Elizabeth's age for Sally stands.]
As he is leaving the Time-Life Building, Don runs into Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt), who was his Beatnik lover back in 1960-61 and claims to have just been at a meeting with a Time-Life-associated magazine and seems intent on getting Don back to her apartment to buy a painting and have dinner with her husband Perry (John Ales). Don agrees and when they reach Midge and Perry’s coldwater flat, the place is a sordid mess. Perry, a sweaty, desperate pitchman for his wife’s art, starts to sell Don on “No. 4,” a painting in a series of works based on what Midge sees when she closes her eyes. Don can sense the crazed urgency, especially when Perry offers to pimp Midge out to him. Neither has any cash to buy groceries for dinner, so Don slides Perry a tenner and he runs out excitedly. Midge dismisses Perry as an idiot who’s going to take the $10 and “put it in his arm.” Considering that Midge is acting as antsy as Perry and possibly because she hasn’t taken her sweater off and it’s September, Don figures she’s just as strung out. He asks her what heroin is like, and she describes it as drinking “100 bottles of whiskey while someone licks your t–s.” Perry got her hooked and now she cannot stop. Don writes a $300 check for “No. 4,” but Midge says, “Don, what am I going to do with a check?” He gives her $125 in cash, and he can’t get out of there fast enough.
Meanwhile, Sally is in her therapy session with Dr. Edna (Patricia Bethune), during which they play cards and talk casually. Dr. Edna tells Sally how proud she is of her progress and that she can cut back to one session a week so she can participate in ballet and such. Sally, I mean. But then when Dr. Edna tells Betty about cutting back, Betty becomes visibly distraught and describes Sally as a “mess.” When Dr. Edna suggests that Betty, who always has plenty she wants to talk about during their monthly sessions to discuss Sally, should see one of her colleagues, Betty practically begs for them to continue their meetings. Now, Betty has never been a paragon of parenting but jeez: she’s keeping Sally in therapy just so she can get counseling on the side without the stigma. Who’s the mess here?
Megan the Sex Robot tells Don that the partners are assembled in the lobby, so he joins them in time to meet Atherton, who dejectedly announces that Phillip Morris canceled their meeting. They went with Leo Burnett, and this causes everyone to spontaneously lose their feces. Bert hilariously kicks Harry out of the partners’ meeting, and Mr. TV joins Peggy, Stan and the other kids to listen through the wall while Don tells everyone that “We’re desperate — they can smell it on us” — a common theme in this episode. Lane tells the partners that he has secured a line of credit so they can continue to operate, but the senior partners (Sterling, Cooper and Draper) will have to cough up $100,000 in collateral and the juniors (Pryce and Campbell) must pony up $50,000 — and remember, we’re talking 1965 dollars, so even for relatively rich practitioners of the advertising arts, these are princely sums. Petey is objecting and making one of his faces, but Lane reminds him that his contract stipulates that he must do so if asked. See, Petey, buying an apartment on Fifth Avenue is the bright side of this business, and then there are the obligations, schmucky.
While Sally and Glen talk about dreams of floating, death and the woman on the Land ‘O Lakes box, Pete corners Don about how Phillip Morris used the threat of an SCDP meeting to get a better deal with Leo Burnett, and how he cannot afford the $50,000. Don explains to Pete that “I’m doing everything I can.” Pete and Don have one of the more complicated dynamics in this office, given Pete’s acquired knowledge and Don’s power. These two are joined in an eternal business relationship, whether they can stand one another or not.
Peggy, who shares a similar but far more pleasant dynamic with Don, suggests that the agency simply rename itself and start over. Don thinks this is ridiculous — they just started SCDP, after all — but Peggy thinks this would be “changing the conversation.” That evening, Pete and Trudy have a conversation worth changing: she gets all happy because the bank called about a loan application. She thinks they’re moving out to the suburbs, but when Petey informs her of its purpose, she get supremely pissed, telling him that he’s just using the money to preserve his “state room on the Titanic.” She forbids him from throwing their money at the firm or asking her daddy for cash, to which Petey says she cannot forbid him to do jack squat, though… I think she kind of did.
Back at the man-cave, Don nearly throws out “No. 4,” but then he begins to ponder the thing and the nature of addiction, how Lucky Strike got people addicted to cigarettes (an addiction some people argue is as difficult to shake as heroin) and how SCDP became addicted to tobacco money. He begins to write in his journal an entry titled “Why I’m Quitting Tobacco,” and he details how tobacco is a product that “never improves, causes illnesses and makes people unhappy.” He types up this screed, copy-edits it in red ink and puts in an envelope. The entry becomes a full-page ad in the New York Times.
It was a radical move and probably a genius one, but the partners at SCDP hate, hate, hate it. The Silver Ferret smells blood and tells Don he’s glad he can step aside as the chief reason for the agency’s failure, but then Megan the Sex Robot walks in to inform Don that Sen. Robert Kennedy’s office is on the line. A voice comes on that is just full of baked beans and chowder, showering praise on Don for his move, but really it is reigning Manhattan advertising d-bag Ted Chaough doing a generic Kennedy impression. When Don hangs up on Ted’s ass, Bert goes absolutely bonkers, saying that they’ve “created a monster” with Don, and that he’s taking his shoes and getting the hell out of there — he’s resigning from the agency. Lane reminds Don that he’s got to belch up 100-large by the close of business “as it were.” When everyone else leaves, MSR comes in to stroke Don’s… ego, telling him that she admires what he did with the letter. When Don owns up to the fact that it was hardly an altruistic move, she tells him she understands that it was “he didn’t dump me, I dumped him.” MSR calculates like Texas Instruments — amazing. Wonder if she’s already picked out her dress.
Don calls Peggy into his office, and she’s relieved when she finds out there will be no pink slip for her — for now — but that many of her underlings will be sent packing shortly. He asks her what she thought of the ad. “I thought you didn’t go in for those kinds of shenanigans,” she says, referring to his criticism of her ham scheme in 401. She smiles as part of their mutual appreciation, and prepares for the wailing and rending of garments.
So Betty is creeping along in the Cadillac with the window rolled down and her Benson and Hedges hanging out when she sees Sally sneaking through the alley to meet with Glen. She brakes as if a deer ran in front of her and races after her daughter. Glen, ever that wall of fortitude and strength, nearly urinates on himself running away. Betty tells Sally that Glen is a bad kid — I don’t know if he’s a bad kid, but he’s got some odd ticks and looks a little too much like Alfred Molina. “I know him better than you do,” she says, mainly on the basis of him stealing a lock of her hair and trying to put his fat tongue in her mouth.
Faye is standing outside the “Don Draper” door as Don approaches with MSR. Faye is carrying a box of belongings, and once inside the office, she informs Don that Atherton resigned their services with SCDP because he wants to work with tobacco again. Don sheepishly tells her he didn’t think of that one, but the fringe benefit is that Don and Faye can date with impunity until and presumably after he marries MSR. He suggests that they go to La Caravelle (33 W 55th), which was still a fairly new French restaurant at the time (closed in 2004). She tells him, “Have your girl set it up,” after which the entire Time-Life Building is spontaneously shrouded in ice. As Faye leaves, Peggy tells her she’d like to have a drink sometime, that she admires Faye as someone who is strong and doesn’t have to play any games. “Is that what it looks like?” Faye asks. They’re still games — Faye just plays them Faye-styley.
Back at the Draper/Francis domicile, Henry shows up for that family dinner Sally was so enthusiastic about, but then Betty puts the kibosh on Sally’s happiness, telling him that she’s finally ready to move, and it looks like the Franci will be relocating to Rye, N.Y., home of Playland, which makes Bobby happy, but Sally runs from the table and spends the rest of the evening crying while clutching the lanyard Glen gave her at Christmas.
Back at SCDP, the remaining partners meet to discuss the layoffs and Roger the Silver Ferret tells Don, who at first thought it was a joke, that the American Cancer Society wants to talk to them about ads. Sure, it would be non-profit work, but it could be the window that opens when a door closes. Well, it’s time to hand out the pink slips: “Don saved the company,” Petey says. “Now go get rid of half of it.” Not so fast, you ingrate: as Lane informs him, Don paid Petey’s collateral. Petey raises his whiskey glass to toast Don — yeah, that and $50,000 should cover it. Then Don gives Danny Siegel the tiny ax, and many people we’ve never seen before hang their heads and carry boxes as Don surveys the wreckage.
I’m not sure that we’re going to see the resurrection of SCDP this Sunday as this extraordinary season wraps up — I understand that the final episode centers on a road trip, so we might not see anyone other than Don and his kids. But there is a lot to suss out: is this the last of Bert Cooper? Does Faye stand a chance up against a crafty Nexus-6 pleasure model?
Does Henry get offed by Glen?
“Mad Men” Recap: 411, “Chinese Wall”
By early September 1965, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is being forced into a wartime mindset, and while Don Draper is a supreme commander when he’s not hitting the Jamesons too hard, he makes two crucial mistakes late in this episode and it’s hard to imagine any of this working out on the bright side. Sure, SCDP will be fine — well, most of it anyway — and everything will work out on the business end of things, but Don makes a bad play, and then a worse one. And given the magnitude of this screwup, Draper could possibly be facing his most brutal confrontation with his true past before the season ends.
It’s a Beatnik Beach Party with Joyce and Abe! Peggy and Joyce pile into the car after crazy times at Jones Beach, where Peggy has to shake the sand out of her hair and Joyce wonders aloud whether that is actually sand. It is Jones Beach after all — it could be medical waste, it could be Malt-O-Meal, it could be any number of things. So then Abe piles into the back seat with Peggy, and apparently all that “Nurenburg on Madison Avenue” claptrap is all in the past. Peggy and Abe are cozy and mega-sexual: they go back to Peggy’s place, and Abe is all over our Peggy, telling her that her shoulders make her look like an Olympian. That’s a nice compliment — much better than, “Your job makes you look like a fascist!” We’re not privy to the whys or hows of this new state of affairs: on “Mad Men,” we’re simply asked to accept that things happen because, well, they do.
Ken is at dinner with his fiance, her mother and Laura Palmer’s dad (Ray Wise) when he runs into an old colleague from BBDO, who offers condolences about the loss of Lucky Strike. Ken, of course, goes into total apoplexy and rushes off to track down Petey, who is at the hospital while Trudy gives birth to Campbellspawn. Pete similarly craps his pants and when he is unable to get Roger on the phone, he calls Don. Don tells Pete to wake Bert Cooper and go directly to the office.
So everyone is gathered at Roger Sterling’s Korova Milk Bar: Bert’s in his jammies and everyone is somewhere on the scale between morose and screaming. Sterling is trying to act surprised that all this is happening and then is prodded to — oh, I don’t know — call Lee Garner Jr. and ask why the hell he’s doing this. So Roger gets on the phone and slyly puts his finger on the receiver to fake the call. He blows out a lot of faux outrage — “Thirty years, I have to hear it on the street?” What a guy. He then offers to fly down to Raleigh to try to change Garner’s mind. It strikes me that Sterling might have considered flying down to Raleigh about 30 seconds after their disastrous dinner wrapped up, but one of the underlying messages this season is that Roger is somewhere below Danny Siegel in the roster of essential SCDP personnel.
Don returns to his apartment and tells Faye about the bloodbath. Faye tries to be comforting, saying “Look at that face,” like she’s kissing a puppy. “”You’re the most hirable man on Madison Avenue.” Don doesn’t think it’s come to that, but one has to wonder just how quickly Draper would be snapped up. It’s not like his equals at BBDO or, more to the point, Ted Chaough would get out of the way for Draper, and I wonder if their bosses would ax them in order to bring in Don if SCDP hits the skids. I don’t think we’re going to find out what would happen — the destruction of SCDP is unlikely at this point.
Pete goes back to the hospital waiting room and tells his father-in-law about Lucky Strike, and Trudy’s dad treats this whole SCDP thing like Petey’s been hitchhiking through Europe or playing bass on tour with the Four Seasons for the past year and a half and now it’s time to get serious about his career. He also throws Ted Chaough’s name around, which is a lot like throwing poop around. Meanwhile, Peggy and Abe are getting pants-happy in Peggy’s apartment, which means Peggy will have a nice post-coital smile when she arrives at SCDP and discovers that 68 to 72 percent of the agency’s business is out the door.
Now, about that: Roger calls Bert to let him know that Garner said he can’t go for that, no can do, but he’s calling from a nice suite in Manhattan, not North Carolina. God, Roger’s been such a mongoose this episode, you’d think Rudyard Kipling wrote a story about him. Again, this is one of those plot points that would be impossible in 2010 — the hotel’s main number would show up on SCDP’s caller id. Of course, Roger could probably use his iPhone and maintain the charade.
Immediately afterward, Bert calls a full staff meeting to announce that Lucky Strike is up in smoke, then turns it over to Don Draper Superstar, who rallies the troops by telling them “”We’re going to push ourselves and it will be exhilarating.” By the looks of it, the boiler-room atmosphere that awaits our heroes looks about as exhilarating as full immersion in fish guts, but maybe I’m not the type-A personality who gets jazzed about 80-hour work weeks. The whip will be cracked. When the head of accounting gives a very tired spiel about financial policy and asks for questions, Danny’s hand shoots up, but nobody sees him because he’s about the size of a fully-grown Manhattan bedbug.
Don then ushers the creative team to his office, where Danny assumes he’s going to be the first to get a swift kick out of the Time-Life Building, but Don assures the homunculus that if he’s in the room, he’s still alive. He tells them that the SCDP brass will be in charge of shaking the trees for new business while creative does everything to retain the current clients. Peggy, who showed up late and a little flushed, is told that she will take the lead on getting Playtex on board, because having Don do it might make the situation look desperate.
Still at his Manhattan hotel room and now looking for company, Roger calls Joan to apologize for all the subterfuge and to let her know that he’s got a bed under him that could use some testing. She is equal parts disgust and sympathy, telling him that if he had said something sooner, they might have been able to do something about Lucky Strike. Sterling just wants her to get down to his room and “comfort him,” but Joan isn’t buying, mainly because flopsweat isn’t sexy.
Back where people are actually trying to keep the company afloat instead of hiding from their problems, Peggy starts talking about Playtex Living Gloves in a way that could make anyone want to do a sink full of dishes, describing them as the things that will save a woman’s hands for the things she really like to touch, which is making Stan and Danny get a tad squirmy. Then Abe shows up pretending to be a delivery boy, which brings to mind at least a few dirty blues songs, and Stan and Danny go off to snicker: “”Am I wrong, or is she giving it off?” Squiggy asks Lenny.
Ken and Pete (who spends much of his time in various states of semi-consciousness when padding around SCDP in this episode) make calls to current clients to assure them of SCDP’s solidity and then gather to discuss the state of things, but in the middle of this confab, Don is pulled away by Megan the Sex Robot for a call from Glo-Coat, who basically tell Don, “Thanks for the fine work on Glo-Coat, but would you please hold this anvil while we throw you in the Hudson?” Completely infuriated, Don breaks his Clio and storms back to the meeting to castigate Petey for spending so much time on the birth of his child that he let Glo-Coat skip out. Campbell leaves to return to not worrying about Glo-Coat, and he is greeted by Ted Chaough, who gives him a baby gift and starts talking up a big-time position with CGC, where he undoubtedly will oversee some great accounts like, say, Union Carbide, lawn darts and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic.
Roger goes to Joan’s apartment and, smooth operator that he is, immediately insults her choice of pajamas — jammies are big in this episode. Somehow, he manages to kiss her without getting a frying pan to the back of his silver skull, but Joan pushes him away, telling him “I can’t do this anymore.” I suppose I could understand this relationship at one point, but Roger has never been more pathetic — he was dealing from a stronger position when he was vomiting oysters a few seasons back.
In his office with Faye, Don tells her the clients are “dropping like flies,” and then insists that Ms. Miller should tear down this Chinese wall and start funneling her clients to SCDP. And this infuriates Faye, who tells Don that the only thing that keeps her alive in the business is her integrity, but Don acts like she just said all of that in Mandarin. He tells her, “I’d do it for you,” but Faye tells him she would never ask in the first place. It’s worth noting that Don and Roger aren’t really that far apart here in terms of spiral, it’s just that Sterling doesn’t keep his cool as well, and while Don has mostly earned everything that is now being taken from him, Roger inherited Lucky Strike and is now acting like a bratty child who just found out that the silver spoon is silverplate.
We haven’t had any frat-boy hijinks from Stan in at least an episode, so now it’s time for him to get inappropriately randy with Peggy: as she gets ready to pitch Playtex, Stan pretends that he’s some kind of enlightened spiritual leader who can peer into her soul and teaches her deep-breathing exercises. And of course, he puts his fat tongue in her mouth and she has to push him off of her. Peggy could be reading a P&L statement and Stan would think she was hot for him.
Roger finally announces that his fake entreaties to Garner and Lucky Strike have resulted in just as little success. Don goes off on Roger for letting his only account go by the wayside, but this friendly family gathering is interrupted by Megan the Sex Robot, who lets them know that Trudy just gave birth to a baby girl. Pete seems as pleased as Pete seems capable of seeming pleased, and then the gang excuses themselves to attend the funeral of a fellow adman in hopes of siphoning some business — SCDP is reduced to scooping roadkill in hopes of turning it into a feast. (By the way, if you think MSR has been unusually visible this episode, you’re probably sensing a big move. Well, keep your pants on, so to speak.) But when Roger complains to Bert about Don being out of line, Bert gives him the high hat: “Lee Garner Jr. never took you seriously because you never took yourself seriously,” Bert tells him.
As Peggy prepares for her Playtex pitch, Stan decides to let her go into the pitch with lipstick on her teeth, since the only appropriate move after being spurned for trying to force your beefy self on a co-worker is to let them potentially scuttle increasingly precious business. Everything goes fine, although the Playtex guy spends most of the meeting trying to tell Peggy about the unfortunate confluence of cosmetics and dentistry in her mouth and it comes off like just another schmo trying to make time with her. Ultimately, Playtex is impressed, but after the meeting, Harry the Deflating Device informs her of the smear.
The funeral is clearly a cautionary tale. While Freddy Rumson points out potential business that might be stolen while the deceased is eulogized as a great creative man who was “given to” his company by his family, who sit through all these niceties as if each fine sentiment were a hot knife. He was just another guy who sacrificed his family for office success and died in his early 50s of Lucky Strikes and Jamesons.
When Megan stays late to help Don, she really stays late to help Don — out of his pants. But seriously, folks: Megan is one worshipful receptionist of French extraction with an eye toward winning the Draper Matrimonial Sweepstakes. “You’re in my head all day and you don’t know anything about me.” Well, in a few moments he will know her in the Biblical sense, but MSR promises Don that she will not wail and rend her garments like Allison did. Plus, she’ll prop up “Mr. Draper” (she says, salaciously) whenever he needs it and probably not pitch much of a fuss when Faye Miller shows up. Megan is a remarkable convenience.
Roger goes home to find Jane (making what I think is her first appearance this season, since Peyton List was so busy wasting her time earlier this year with “FlashForward”) wearing the kind of gaudy housewife clothing one would expect Lucille Ball to wear on “The Lucy Show.” She presents him with a box full of copies of his terrible memoir and she tell him, “I’m so proud of you” and nuzzles him. Hollow praise and hollow affection for a hollow autobiography by a hollow man.
Don goes home to the man cave and discovers Faye, who has apparently had a change of heart about giving up information about her clients, and presents Heinz on a silver platter. While she also seems ready for a roll on the Sealy, Don is exhausted (well, of course he is), and just asks her to cuddle. Aww.
Now, clearly Don has set himself up for something terrible, especially if Faye ever gets wind of him making time with the MSR, but as we’ve noted before, Matthew Weiner learned the game of red herrings from the best practitioner in television history, David Chase. (Still wondering what happened to the Russian in “Pine Barrens,” are you? The world will never know.) There might never be a real payoff, but it just lies there in the background, creating tension. Then again, 68 to 72 percent of SCDP business has fallen away. Tension is not exactly a rare commodity.
“Mad Men” Recap: 410, “Hands and Knees”
With the various unravelings taking place in “Hands and Knees,” nearly every major character in “Mad Men” is facing just how tenuous success, happiness, relationships or simply the fragile balance of day-to-day life can be. The episode was a kind of chamber of horrors — everything that can go wrong, short of death or the cratering of the entire advertising industry, is going wrong for our Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce heroes and heroines. That being said, it was not a landmark episode on the order of practically everything that came before it this season, but it was extremely plot-heavy, likely serving as the springboard for some key moves in the final three.
Jon Hamm recently told NPR’s Terry Gross that one of Matthew Weiner’s key tenets for “Mad Men” is that actions have consequences — maybe not from week to week, but everything catches up eventually. This week, we see an unexpected consequence of actions set into motion in season 2 (Pete’s aerospace deal from StaticBlog’s beloved “The Jet Set” episode), and something from last week (Roger and Joan’s post-mugging alley romp). At the top, Joan informs Roger that “she’s late,” and that it could not possibly be her husband Greg, who by now is probably drinking pre-mixed martinis out of an IV bottle in an olive-drab tent. Greg left seven weeks ago, and the mugging was six weeks ago — that’s going to be one silver-haired baby.
And apparently, the bad feelings between Sally and Don persist, and Don is doing everything he can to make up for the fact that he won’t let his little girl live in his Greenwich Village man-cave and make French toast for him, so he calls up to Chez Betty Francis to see if Sally wants to go see the Beatles at Shea Stadium. Sally starts screaming — she might want to save that for the show: she won’t hear a note, but it’ll be 30 minutes that she’ll never forget.
Now we find out we will get to meet the evil bag of pickled Yorkshire pudding responsible for impregnating Lane Pryce’s mother. Robert Pryce (W. Morgan Sheppard) has arrived in New York to bring his son back to Blighty and make nice with the estranged Mrs. Pryce, because hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. Lane asks Don to go along to dinner, mainly because he could use some backup, but also because Don is essentially Lane’s designated wingman after last New Year’s Eve. So before the festivities, Lane, Pete, Don and Harry meet the rocket men from North American Aviation about promoting their hot new technology, and while key information is currently being blocked out, the NAA guys promise our SCDP men that the big, black blocks will magically go away as business progresses, but as we’ll soon find out, this will require some work from G-men and whatnot.
Playboy Club time — it’s pretty amazing that it took Lane Pryce to escort us to that monument to 1960s swinging, the Playboy Club, after 3.75 seasons. So we’re sitting there as Lane tries to big-dog it in front of his pustule of a father and Don is just observing, bemused at the sight of Lane. Mr. Pryce just bitches about not getting his drinks, but Lane wants to introduce his new girlfriend Toni (Naturi Naughton, who played Lil Kim in the Biggie Smalls biopic “Notorious”). Lane is pretty happy with himself, and he seems to be using this new relationship as a symbol of his independence — a not-so-subtle message to Dear Old Dad that he cannot tell his boy what to do anymore, and besides, he’s got a new life in NYC.
Cut to the following day, and men in hats appear on Betty’s doorstep. These guys are doing a background check on her ex-husband, and suddenly a new dimension to Don/Dick’s subterfuge becomes scarily apparent: because Don needs a government clearance to work with North American Aviation on their account, everyone could soon find out that Don Draper was killed in Korea in 1952. The G-men ask Betty if Don is who he says he is, and while that seems to be code for “Is Don Draper a commie pinko?” Betty is freaked, but not as freaked as Don will be. She calls Don to tell him about the interview, and Don goes into extreme damage control mode, sweating like a nattily dressed stuck pig. He immediately goes to his new secretary Megan (Jessica Pare) and asks her if she submitted a background investigation form on him. It turns out that Megan filled it out herself and asked Don to sign it. Like he does, Don just signed it without knowing what it was, and now he runs the risk of having everybody besides Pete Campbell know about his past and, beyond all that, probably wind up in Levenworth.
Megan, who in her sexy android way is so eager to please, practically begs Don to fire her for screwing up, when in truth she followed standard protocol at SCDP. This subservience is just what Don likes, but not what he needs right now.
In another life, I used to process background investigations in the military and was subjected, during boot camp, to my own background interview and subsequent investigation, so I’m particular interested in and attuned to just how quickly Draper’s false life would fall apart under today’s circumstances. By modern standards, his back story would be in ashes in about 30 seconds. In 1965, if the full investigation were to go forward, he’d probably have a week or so before he’d need to hop a flight to Rio and spend the next several years trading swimsuit models with Ronnie Biggs.
Lane, on the other hand, has more familiar and familial problems at hand. He goes back to the Playboy Club after hours to talk to Toni. “You know that I love you, my chocolate bunny,” he tells her. She’s definitely swayed by how “dashing” he is, but an accent can go a long way.
So Roger and Joan go to see Joan’s OB, who is one seriously judgmental scold (“You have used this woman!”). He tells Roger to write down the name of a doctor who performs abortions in Jersey, because he doesn’t want it in his own handwriting. One thing “Mad Men” has excelled at is chronicling the shift in medical ethics and even the tone and bedside manner used by doctors. The doc talks like Joan isn’t even in the room.Meanwhile, Don is losing his feces over the investigation and calls in Pete to see if his buddy in government can get the investigation halted, telling him he’d probably skip town and country to get away. Pete is pissed, because he knows this means the contract, which he’s been working on since 1962, is probably going away.
The silver fox shows himself as truly a silver weasel in the next scenes, where he wonders aloud if the pregnancy is a sign that he and Joanie should be together, but that doesn’t exactly fit into his scheme given the fact that Jane Siegel Sterling is sitting at home and Roger isn’t keen on two alimony payments a month. So he tells Joan she should just raise the kid as Greg’s baby: it would be Roger’s child, but he would not be in the picture. Joan isn’t sold on this one and, frankly, Roger isn’t exactly impressing her with his chivalry. “I’ll take care of it,” she tells him. Throughout this episode, Roger seems more upset that his dream of having Joan as his woman on the side again isn’t happening according to plan. With this scene, he basically carves a tombstone for their relationship.
When Betty tells Henry about the investigation, Henry is a little upset that agents were in there talking to his wife without his knowledge, but then he gets this kid who wants to be an astronaut look in his eyes and ponders that, just maybe, he’ll be the subject of a background investigation someday. Oh, dare to dream, Henry. But Henry has more to worry about than not measuring up to Don in terms of importance to national security: Betty willingly lied to investigators about Don/Dick. If she hated Don as much as she professes, she would not have done that. She might just have been worried that Don’s heart was going to explode in his chest, but I think there’s more to it than mere medical concern.
Pete’s ire is only rising over the NAA account: the next day, he tells Don he thinks the agency could survive and thrive even if Don were exposed as Dick Whitman and got carted away to the hoosegow, but Don is unequivocal: “Get rid of it.” Pete doesn’t have any leverage, and it’s in sharp contrast to the way Pete perceived things back at the old Sterling Cooper when he found Don/Dick’s true identity. Speaking of which, has Don ever heard of a safe deposit box?
Don directs his accountant to establish a trust fund for Sally, the boys and Betty, and the accountant is more than a little dubious about the notion, thinking it is unwise to grant Betty access to such funds. Yeah, me too — this plays like one of those seemingly minor moves that turn into a colossal problem two years from now. Or, it’s one more step on the road back to Don and Betty’s marital unhappiness.
But true unhappiness, thy name is Joan. She sits in the waiting room of that New Jersey doctor while a mother her age or younger cries for her daughter as she gets an abortion. The woman assumes that Joan is there for her own daughter and asks how old she is. “15,” she replies. It’s a lie of comfort, but you can see that Joan, having been here a couple of times before and riding alone back to the city on a bus, feels like no progress has been made.
Roger, meanwhile, is getting his ass handed to him by Lee Garner Jr. After dinner and drinks, the Lucky Strike scion tells Sterling that he’s covering the check — an ominous move, given that it’s the agency that traditionally wines and dines the client, not the other way around. Garner informs Roger that they’re consolidating all their business with BBDO, and Sterling looks like he’s going to throw up, which is actually Don’s job at the moment. Roger tells Garner that he has covered for him in the past (re: Sal, I suppose), and that he owes him to give SCDP 30 days to make things right. At the moment, we don’t know what this means. He might try to mitigate the loss (yes) or convince Garner that SCDP should take care of all company business (a tough bill). At any rate, according to Lane Pryce, Lucky Strike constitutes anywhere from 68 to 72 percent of SCDP’s business. This is bad.
So yes, Don is a quivering mess of a man, feverish and sweating profusely when Faye finds him in his office and insists on taking him home. Once they arrive in the Village, Don sees two men in hats walking down the hallway, and he can barely contain his stomach — he rushes into the apartment and projects epic chunks into the porcelain. Faye is concerned, but Don isn’t suffering from chest pain, and if she learned anything from her heart-patient father, that is the dividing line between panic attack and heart attack.
Now, when it comes to actual pain, Lane Pryce knows what that feels like, now that his kidney pie-eating pig-tyrant fossil of a father has shown up to press the issue on Lane’s return to the British Empire. Lane had Toni there and had hoped that he, Toni and his liver-stained potted meat mound of a father could have dinner so they might get better acquainted. Well, Robert is going to take a pass, so Toni goes on ahead while Lane and Robert have some quality father-and-son time, culminating in that ancient, moldy treacle tart rapping Lane hard in the old bean with his death cane and then stepping hard on our old lad’s bangers-and-mash grabber. God, what a bastard that old booze sop is — I was hoping Lane would take his now-swollen hand and give that tepid beer swiller a sock in his shepherd’s pie hole.
Up on Park Avenue, Trudy, wearing poofy pregnancy lingerie, walks into the living room to find Pete brooding and/or pouting. He won’t share what is bothering him, but he bemoans the people who leave destruction in their wake (Don) while “the honest people” are left to clean it up. So, who are these honest people you speak of, Petey? Everybody’s got something to hide except for me and my monkey: Roger is at the office, frantically calling old contacts to cover up for the impending Lucky Strike loss, finding out that some of them have died while he was writing his memoirs and resting on a big pillow of tobacco money. But Don, to his credit, is sick of all the lies and, well, just sick: he tells Faye about the real Don Draper and Dick Whitman. It’s strange, but Faye never really seems shocked at anything Don tells her. You would think that there would be at least a pause, but Faye never misses a beat, suggesting that Don might be able to get leniency. Don counters, telling Faye there is no statute of limitations on desertion. But then Pete shows up, acts a little haughty and disgusted at seeing Faye there, although it could be just one of his faces, and tells Don that if they drop the account, the investigation will not go through.
Joan tells Roger that the procedure went fine and they averted “a tragedy,” which might be a kind of loaded statement if you think about the possibility that Joan could have ended up shackled to this mewling has-been for the balance of her life. Roger and Joan go into the partners’ meeting and Pete reveals that NAA is toast, which gives Roger license to rip Pete up and down. This serves two purposes: Roger has a legitimate complaint because they’re passing up good money, and Roger can use Pete as a convenient whipping boy and object of Lucky Strike fury. When Joan goes down the list of clients and asks if Lucky Strike is stable, Roger gives her a “thumbs up.”
Then Faye comes into Don’s office, where he tells her everything is resolved on the Don/Dick potential fiasco. She tells him, “You see? Everything worked out.” But Don Draper is still Dick Whitman is still Don Draper. After agreeing to dinner on the weekend, Faye leaves and Don kind of luxuriates in the pliant, vacant beauty of Megan, watching her apply lipstick so that she’ll be pleasing to everyone. That’s our Don — tell Faye everything you’ve ever hidden from the world, and then threaten your very well-being when you have sex with another secretary (well, to his credit, he skipped one) and incur Faye’s wrath.
And as we saw a couple of weeks before, Faye’s got wrath to spare if she’s crossed.
– Lang
“Mad Men” Recap, 409: “The Beautiful Girls”
Well, so much for the chaste, “That’s as far as I can go right now” Don Draper, but our anti-hero is still the guy we met in “The Summer Man” — fighting his way back, regaining his power. And that’s a good thing, because he needs full control of his faculties with the fecal storm brewing in this episode. As Don and Faye make the beast with two backs in the Greenwich Village man cave, there are two sodas on the table and a lamp crashing to the floor.
“Is it broken?” Faye asks.
“The lamp?” Don says, wondering if, in fact, the bed needs to be hauled to the curb.
Their post-coital pillow talk is what you expect from two people subsumed with work: Don attempts to get information about Faye’s other clients, but the “Chinese wall” is a strong one. Don leaves for SCDP, where Roger is having a fit with a potential publisher over his ephemera-filled memoir. Joan informs Roger that Lane will be taking two weeks off for his son’s visit to New York, but doesn’t want a memo circulated because he’s afraid people will stop working — officious limey. When Roger asks if he could give Joan a “hard time” (heh-heh, he said “hard time”), Joan tells him it’s “not cute,” and leaves. Caroline comes in, and asks him what he said to her, then tells the silver fox that Joanie’s pseudo-surgical husband is off to French Indo-China, where he’ll presumably spend R&R in a dank Saigon hotel room where every minute he stays in the room, he gets weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger.
Don arrives and immediately blows off Peggy, who is worried about both a car-parts company and a laxative maker coming in, and how messy that could be. Don is not concerned, because The Summer Man just got back from a swim and now it’s time for a nappy-poo. Ida Blankenship, ever the fount of good tidings, tells Peggy, “It’s a business of sadists and masochists. You know which one you are.”
So then Joyce Ramsey (Zosia Mamet) shows up to invite Peggy for drinks, Stan makes some snide lesbian jokes and tells Joyce “you can never do what a man can do.” Joyce tells him, “You’re right,” and licks Peggy’s face. Now, I’m fairly sure that Stan could physically pull that off, but he probably doesn’t have license to do so. Then Peggy tells Stan, “Bad news — Don showed up. We’re on at 4.” Stan immediately swings around and gets to work — no smarting off or anything. The lessons of Joey resonate.
Don wakes up from his refreshing siesta, Ida gives him a message from Faye, and as he’s walking off, she asks him, “Are you going to the toilet?” like she was some kind of distaff Archie Bunker. Oh, Miss Blankenship, how we’re going to miss you.
Peggy’s at the bar, commiserating over the competition at SCDP when Abe Drexler from the downtown be-in/Factory party shows up. Joyce might be interested in some personal Peggy time, but she’s kind enough to help out the apparently lovelorn beatnik Abe — total set-up. Joyce excuses herself to go throw darts — presumably at pictures of Stan. During drinks, Abe goes on and on with his anti-corporate blather while Peggy explains that SCDP is there to help companies that need good communication, and that most of the companies are family owned — including Fillmore Auto Parts. Abe tells her that the company does not hire blacks in the South, which upsets Peggy, but what upsets her more is that Abe, for all his supposed enlightenment, is kind of a chauvinist. He doesn’t see that equal rights for women is all that important.
Meanwhile, in a very nice move, Swedish masseuses appear at Joan’s front door — it’s rubdown and pedicure time. The silver fox isn’t always the most sensitive guy, but this was smoove.
Bert is doing a crossword puzzle and asks Ida for “a three-letter word for a flightless bird.” She tells him, “emu.” He says it starts with an “L,” and she says, “the hell it does.” The would have made a lovely old couple.
Joanie comes in and thanks Roger for the day of luxury. He says, “I knew I was rubbing you the wrong way, so I thought, why not have somebody rub you the right way?” Yeah, like Johnny Gill. But then, Roger goes a bridge too far and tries to get more than just a thank you. Not smoove.
Speaking of not smoove, Abe Drexler shows up with an obnoxious manifesto instead of the 10 Commandments of Love. The beatniks were cool in their own way, but they weren’t the most romantic bunch. While Peggy walks back out of the lobby, the Fillmore guys are in the meeting room with Don, Ken and Faye. Faye is telling them that the modern man has become soft, but wants to do work on his own car to feel like he’s still in control, so they should market to both the pros and the shadetree mechanics. The Fillmore guys cannot decide who to target, Ken offers to use conjunction junction so they can hit both markets, and Don is overwhelmed. But really, he doesn’t know from overwhelmed, because Megan and her French extraction walk in with terrible, whispered news.
Sally has run away, and was found on the train by Gladys Kravitz-Vivian Winters, who won’t let it lie that she thinks Don is a terrible human being. Ida says about Sally, “She looks so chubby in the pictures,” but those were taken before Betty turned into Joan Crawford. Don gets on the phone and reads Mrs. Henry Francis the riot act, and Betty responds by making Don keep her for the next two days. Don tells Ida to not let Sally leave the room, and Ida says nothing, letting the phone ring.
Speaking of riot acts, Peggy tears Abe a new receptacle over his manifesto, and sends him on the road, so to speak. When Peggy tries to get Ida’s attention, she just sits there with her mouth open. She tries again, then touches her own the shoulder. Ida goes face first into her blotter and Peggy screams.
Megan is forced to go back to the boardroom and French-extract Don with his second round of bad news. Joan, Caroline and Peggy are standing around Ms. Blankenship. Joan tells Megan to get an afghan from Harry Crane’s couch. As Faye, Don and Ken present “Fillmore Auto Parts: For the Mechanic in Every Man” to the execs, we can hear Harry protest that “My mother made that!” Yes, well, you can probably get it back later, Harry. Enjoy!
Tough day at SCDP. Don asks Faye to take Sally back to the man cave. Faye, who is such a winning number with adults, doesn’t know the first thing about talking to kids. She relates to Sally like she was trying to calm down a frothing Rottweiler.
As the men in while wheel out Ida Blankenship, Bert Cooper is understandably distraught — as was revealed in Roger’s memoir tapes, Ida was his 1930s Joan. When Bert asks where they’re taking her, Roger tells him the coroner’s office. He says, “No she’s not, she’s going to Frank E. Campbell.” (Frank E. Campbell: The Funeral Chapel, 1076 Madison Avenue. “Known for excellence, trusted for value since 1898.”)
Roger is understandably upset and self-absorbed, telling Joan “I don’t want to die in this office” — meanwhile, others in SCDP simply don’t care: Harry’s telling a terrible Irish joke while Ida goes to Frank E. Campbell wrapped in Mom’s handiwork. “She died like she lived: surrounded by the people she answered phones for.” Naturally, he turns his grief into a chance for some Joanie fun, and asks her to go for dinner and drinks.
Don goes home, where Faye managed to take care of Sally without breaking anything. Don is pissed, but not too pissed to deprive Sally of order-in pizza. For all his issues, Don knows when his little girl needs something more than commands and criticisms — enough of that back in Westchester.
Roger and Joan have cheesecake, of course. And things are starting to thaw a little. Smoove. And while all that cheesecake is going down, Sally and Don wait for their own pie and Sally starts giving Don the third degree over Faye. Sally seems to have her dad down cold — she knows Faye is more than a co-worker, since she knew where the peanut butter was and she had his keys.
As Roger and Joan walk through a tough neighborhood — one that apparently wasn’t so tough not that long ago, before all that Panic in Needle Park set in — they are accosted by a mugger who takes everything. Roger tells Joan to keep her eyes down, as does he, and they give the fine young man their belongings. This has the effect of making Joan want to get sexy with Roger, and they do — in a stairwell not far from the attack. Personally, I’d rather go up to the Waldorf. Hell, it might be more romantic at Frank E. Campbell.
Don tucks Sally in and asks if she wants to call her mom or her brothers. She really doesn’t want to — she wants to move in. “I’ll be good,” she said. These next few scenes with Sally are pretty heartbreaking. She’s been given a crappy home life and Don, who hasn’t taken a single drink this episode, knows it. He sits down to write in his journal, but nothing happens. The next morning, she makes French toast for her daddy. She tries to bring him some Mrs. Butterworth, but it’s a bottle of rum that just happens to look like a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth. No rum cakes for breakfast. But, all this buttering up works — Don agrees to take Sally to the Central Park Zoo.
And while they visit the lions, Bert and Roger struggle with Ida’s obituary. Joan finally gets things rolling and it finally jog’s Bert’s creative flow:
“She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut.”
If there is a single line that will be remembered from this season of “Mad Men,” it’s that one.
Roger and Joan discuss what happened the night before. Joan says, “I’m not sorry. But I’m married. And so are you.” True enough, but how often have we seen Jane Siegel Sterling this season? It’s on.
Don and Sally walk into his office and are greeted by Megan, who will “be helping out a bit” in Blankenship’s old seat. Honestly, that’s not the kind of help Don needs — that’s why Joan gave him Ida in the first place.
Cosgrove, who repeats Harry’s joke about Ida’s cause of death (“Don Draper”) proceeds to make fun of the Fillmore CEO’s stutter, which Don is assuredly not cool with, and then tells him that they shouldn’t use rock ‘n’ roll if they want middle-American males to buy in. So, it’s all translucent crooners like Frankie Laine and Perry Como who are mentioned to sing in the spot. Peggy goes for Harry Belafonte to tally Fillmore auto parts. No go.
And then, when Don announces that Betty and Henry are downstairs, Sally starts to throw a fit. Faye has no idea how to deal with her — “Hi Sally. Remember me from yesterday?” Really? – and runs out screaming down the hall at SCDP and faceplants on the linoleum. Megan picks her up and holds her.
“It’s going to be alright,” Megan says in her ultra-cheery tone.
“No, it’s not,” Sally says, burying her face in Megan’s shoulder.
Sally gives Don a cold goodbye — he wouldn’t save her, and this moment will likely color how she sees Don and how much she can rely on him, for anything, in the next few years. And Faye completely loses it because she thinks Don was testing her and she failed in her handling of Sally. He finally gets her to calm down.
“Jesus, what a mess,” Don says, commenting on everything that essentially crashed and burned this episode.
“But part of it is good, right?” Faye asks.
“Yeah.” And they kiss.
Joyce returns and agrees that “Abe Wexler pulled a boner.” (Heh-heh — remember, it meant making a mistake in 1965), and tells Peggy some painful metaphor about soup and pots. Peggy finishes her drink and departs, getting into the elevator with Joan and Faye. Each woman dealing with her own pain that no man in that office can seem to understand.
This was not a landmark episode like … all the ones that preceded it this season, but the farewell to Ida, and Bert’s obit, were excellent. The character was not meant to be there long, but she served her purpose when Don didn’t need any Allisons or Megans around.
Ida Blankenship, Astronaut, 1898-1965
– Lang
