Mad Men (The Beautiful Girls)

Ladies take precedence in this weeks episode, after the brief Peggy/Joan teaser from Summer Man.

The episode begins with some innapro-pro Don and Faye scenes. Apparently, Don has decided that he has overcome whatever obstacle was preventing him from going beyond Faye's door last week. He even trusts Faye to stay in his home unattended, the only stipulation being that she locks the door on the way out. Far cry from the man who once kept a secret drawer in his own house.

However, ladies are the story this week, with almost every impactful woman in Don's life and the SCDP universe making an appearance.

Don's first female interaction is him brushing off a very flustered Peggy, who worked through lunch to finish some copy, by telling her he needs a nap.

While last week had the camera revealing a lot of the themes of the episode, this one utilizes peripheral dialogue to get the point across.

The first instance is, right after her brush off from Don, Peggy and her Lesbian friend are making dinner plans in the creative cube and the new art director tells them, "I just want you to know that you can never do what a man can do." To which Peggy replies, "That's true" while giggling. Chauvinist art director is taken aback by the girls not rising to his bait, a sign of the changing cultural times and female empowerment that is fast approaching.

(I promise I will eventually learn some of the non-lead character's names)

Still, it's not all bra-burnings and traveling pants for ladies. Peggy laments that she is unable to hire talented male copywriters because her job would be threatened and she is put off when her handsome bohemian suitor insists that she remain seated at the bar. She does get a little victory when the bartender ignores HBS and listens to her when she orders his scotch.

The bar also sets up Peggy's internal struggle between her progressive views and her traditional workplace. When bored of HBS revolutionary rhetoric, she tries to interject with a lame question about being from Brooklyn (which Peggy is not). She then finds herself defending the unabashedly corporate work she performs on a daily basis.

HBS then gets on a rant about civil rights for the black community and how firms like SCDP aren't helping, when Peggy cooly points out that, "Most things negroes can't do, I can't do either."

HBS is unmoved by her plight and Peggy ditches him.

It's worth noting that this conversation inspires HBS to write a long critique of the state of advertising in civil rights, which he ostensibly writes for Peggy. However, he dismisses the issue that is of real importance to Peggy (equality for women) in favor of the angle that he is comfortable with.

Peggy is already conflicted about SCDP's role in race relations (Have you ever been to the south? They have a different way of doing things. The Fillmore brothers are from Boston. Same thing.), but Don and Co ignore her. Then she turns around to find her voice ignored once again by someone who's reputation is built on being a progressive modern man.

Professionally, we see another instance of Don slipping in the changing face of business. The Filmore people want to do an ad campaign targeting both working mechanics and also weekend warriors (a staple of advertising these days). Don is unimpressed with this idea, "That's not a strategy, that's two strategies." Luckily, he's interrupted by Miss Blankenship (QoP) passing and while he's out Ken and Faye arrange to make that campaign they work with. (This seems like more of a Pete thing than a Ken thing to do, but I suppose it's showing that the younger guys, whoever they are, can be more on top of it than Don). It's worth noting that, in another lady-power moment, Faye gives Don an icy glare and says, "Although it may seem immaterial to you, they like it," making Don look like a chump in front of the clientele. Luckily, he's too flustered to notice.

Another lady who has become a fixture in Don's life, and indeed, someone he "needs," Miss Blankenship (The Queen of Perversions) has some choice moments as well. When discussing Faye, she points out that "She breezes past me." Illustrating that upwardly mobile, modern women can be just as callous toward lowly secretaries as men. In a lovely little double entendre, she also says, "She's pushy that one, I guess that's what it takes." YOU'RE RIGHT MISS BLANKENSHIP QUEEN OF PERVERSIONS, THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A WOMAN IN A MAN'S WORLD AND IN DON'S BED!

Also she dies.

The old thing doesn't even get any respect in death, with one of Harry's afghan's used as a death veil. (My mother made that!)

Remorseful, Roger and Bert try to pen a fitting eulogy. Bert has a great moment of genuine reflection, "She was born in a barn, she died on the 32nd floor of a skyscraper. She's an astronaut." Of course, Bert is back to his old dour way right after he says it.

This also unveils another side of old Bert, who seemed to have genuine affection for the Queen, lending a little more weight to Roger's passing comment in his book about Bert being upset with him for seducing her.

With Mr. Harris shipped off to 'Nam, Roger is back to his Joan-chasing ways. Getting her a massage and taking her out to dinner. Seeking comfort after Miss QoP passes, they go to his favorite restaurant, which turns out to be the same diner where he first hung out with Don.

After a lovely evening, they are mugged on the street, forcing Joan to give up her wedding ring. Then they do the nasty against a subway tunnel...it's weird.

The main wrinkle for Don in this episode is little Sally, who comes all the way to Manhattan to see him. Their meeting leads to another apropos periphery line from Miss Winters (who escorted Sally to SCDP), "Men never know what's going on." Oh snap Weiner etcs! Way to be subtle.

Sally, of course, leads to Betty, who's really only a minor nuisance in this episode, and even she unleashes a little jab at her own domesticated existence, when discussing mothering Sally, "It's so easy, it's so much fun taking care of her."

At first it seems like Don is about to go back to his old sullen ways with Sally at home, but he lightens up, telling her about Faye and ordering pizza. Sally confides in Don about how much she hates living with Betty. They even go to the Zoo the next day! And she makes him rum french toast. Pridefully announcing that she uses the stove all the time at home becoming her own little housewife (of course, carla taught her everything, Peggy is too busy hanging with old dudes).

When it comes time to return to Betty, Don and Sally get into a shouting match. Don brings Faye into the equation (bad move) and she is stymied by Sally's impertinence.

The episode ends with Sally tripping in the hallway, surrounded by images of femininity. Meagan, the young beauty, comforting her. "It'll be alright!" "No...no it won't."

Betty, being faux maternal (she even caresses Sally with her hands protected by gloves).

Joan slowly growing outdated, observing from the background.

Peggy following, ready to have Don's back.

His daughter, hurt and angry and resigned.

Even the lesbian sneaks in, putting a little progressivism into the scene.

I feel like what the director was trying to do here was arrange all of these images of women in the 60's, all these itinerations of what it means to be female in a tumultuous social time in a circle around Don (the only male in the scene), because after all, this is a show about Don and how he interacts with these women and what they represent.

And Don comes through in a way. He meets Faye in his office and she freaks out.

"I feel like there was a test and I failed it."

Faye feels inadequate, not wholly a woman because she doesn't have children, can't deal with children.

"I don't have any children. I love children, but I chose to be where I am, I don't view it as a failure."

And Don, with probably the most sensitive moment we've seen him share, outside of his hand squeeze with Peggy. Just quietly holds her and says, "It doesn't matter...I mean it."

This isn't just Don comforting a woman he wants to sleep with. This is Don validating Faye as a person. By simply holding her, absolving her of the sin of ambition, he is telling her that he accepts (loves?) her for who she is.

Then he whispers quietly, "Jesus, what a mess." Summing up the whole of his relationships, the whole of his life and society. We forget, that as much as Don succeeds, as teflon as he seems, his life is mostly a disaster, and every once in a while he realizes it.

Keeping with the girl power theme, the episode ends with all women.

First, Lesbian discourses on men to Peggy with a soup metaphor and says, "You gotta be their girl, it's the way they want it...but who the hell said we're not soup?"

Peggy seems mostly resigned and refuses to go out with HBS.

The last scene shows Lesbian leaving in an elevator with Faye trailing.

A new lift comes and Faye and Joan get on, Joan holding the door for Peggy. Three women, all at different junctions in their lives unified by their job, by their desire to make it in a man's world.

Mad Men (The Summer Man)

Hello readers, I'm back. This time, I am writing about television. Hopefully it works out a little better than our brief foray into the world of sports. Today, I will be reviewing the 8th episode of this season of Mad Men, The Summer Man.

Stylistically, this episode is a departure from the series as a whole, and this season in particular. The episode opens with a Don voice-over. I believe this is the first time that the series has employed any outside narration, but Don's film noir exposition actually makes sense as the episode plays out.

In the first third of the episode, the director intentionally confuses the viewer as to what is going on, and with that confusion comes revelation and change.

At the outset, Don journals about his childhood and we learn that he didn't finish high school. For someone who claims to never write more than 250 words, Don sure has a handle on elaborate noir prose.

As he describe his days as Dick Whitman, the camera cuts to Don doing laps in a pool. The quick transition coupled with the mention of the past make the viewer at first believe that we are seeing Dick Whitman swimming in Indiana, but, after the character emerges from the water, he unleashes a coughing fit brought on by years of smoking, and we realize that we are seeing Don do something other than drink or work (or canoodle) for the first time in many years.

Don's newfound sobriety is a theme throughout episode, and this is communicated both through stylistic choices by the director and through the action onscreen. The lighting is much brighter than recent episodes have been. Don refuses an armful of bottles from Miss Blankenship (the queen of perversions) and is seen drinking beer instead of liquor when he is writing.

At one point, in a staff meeting, Don gazes lustfully across the room and the camera assumes his point of view. It then focuses on Peggy taking a sip of scotch, leading one to believe the that Don is beginning to desire Peggy, before the camera quickly cuts to a shot of Harry Crane's hand pouring liquor into a glass. Wiener and company tease the viewer with a Peggy/Don romance, but show that, ultimately, Don really lusts after a drink.

As for Don's Tracer Bullet compositions, I'm not quite sure what they are yet. They could be journal entries, or perhaps he was inspired by Roger into writing his own memoirs. The latter seems unlikely for a man who has spent his whole adult life hiding from who he is.

The B story in this episode is lady-centric, with Joan struggling to retain the respect of the younger male employees. The showrunners. have gone noticeably bluer this season in an effort to show the changing national consciousness toward sex and decorum in general, and it shines through particularly with the young men in creative. (Although Roger is not immune to the wiles of a dirty joke either).

After being repulsed by what he feels is a gay come-on by Harry, Joey in turn uses sexuality to belittle Joan and try to exert some power over the office's queen bee.

(As for Harry, I don't feel like he was coming onto Joey, he just seems to be playing up his Jewishness recently, tossing in Yiddish words, and here he seems be acting out the Jewish Mother stereotype, telling Joey, "You're so handsome," and pretending that an acting job is a guarantee for him. This may be the result of his spending so much time in Hollywood).

Joan goes home after Joey's harassment and we get another uncomfortable interaction between her and her husband. Despite his inadequacies as a husband and human being (although there was a cute moment a few episodes ago when he stitched up Joan's hand and told her the donkey dick joke. It also showed he wasn't utterly incompetent as a doctor, as i expected him to somehow botch that operation) she is clearly distraught at the idea of him going to Vietnam. There interaction here is mostly pointless except to establish Joanie's distress and give the viewer the first concrete image of the war as Joan's husband has already had his hair buzzed into a military flattop.

The fruit of Joan's trip home after her next encounter with the boys in creative, where after she is again disrespected (this time with a tasteless drawing) she tells them she can't wait until a year from now when they are in Vietnam dying in the jungle, and hopes they remember that it's not her they're dying for, because she doesn't care about them. It was an excellent monologue for Hendricks, and showed a side of Joan we'd never encountered before.

Peggy, mostly on the backburner this episode steps in at this point and shows Don the drawing, which allows for some nice comic relief, "Forced perspective? Narrative? Are you sure Joey drew this?" Rather than solving her problem, Don tells Peggy to grow up and confront Joey on her own, a sign of his growing respect for the young ad lady.

Puffed up by Don's confidence in her, Peggy calls Joey into her office, demands that he apologize to Joan, but when he refuses, she fires him. What follows is an uninteresting exchange between Peggy and Joan where Joan points out that all that Peggy did was make it seem like Joan was powerless while at the same time coming across as a "cold bitch."

Luckily we've resolved the B-story and can get back to Don.

One thing I noticed about Don's attempts to get sober is that, unlike the buffoonish Freddie Rumsen, Don doesn't need to go cold turkey or attend any meetings to stay sober. While he refuses the extra bottles from the Queen of Perversions, he still drinks a glass of liquor at the staff meeting, but only one. He drinks beer at home. On his date, he orders a glass of chianti. At the end of the episode, he pours a glass of scotch, but only about a pinky.

I have to assume that this is Weiner showing that Don is stronger than the other characters in the show, having the willpower to stop getting hammered but still imbibe on occasion, and without the help of any support groups. After all, Don is an island.

This episode also ratchets up the Don/Henry Francis rivalry, with Henry and Betty spying Don on a date with Bethany. Predictably, Betty acts like a child about it. In the car on the way home, Henry tells Betty that she is being a child (harking back to the psychologist from the first season who claimed Betty was emotionally a still a girl) and Betty gets angry at him. Unfortunately for the off and on impotency of Henry Francis, he didn't get a useable rage-boner. We're reminded again, like at the Thanksgiving dinner, that Henry has gotten himself into a very sticky wicket as he tells Betty that she doesn't hate Don, just like he doesn't hate his ex-wife. Everything is in extremes for child-Betty, love or hate. And in the case of Don, Weiner seems to be hinting that one could be masking the other.

Betty kicks Henry out for a night but he returns the next morning to play husband before work, but not before he smashes some of Don's boxes in the garage out of jealousy and resentment toward the man who owns his house.

Don has a better date than old HF, he has a pleasant evening with Bethany that culminates with a discussion on intimacy (i think, he may just have this with Faye) and some orals. Don being willing to consider openness and intimacy with another person is an almost impossible development from the closed inaccessible character we met in the first season, who was so afraid of anyone knowing him that he led his own brother to commit suicide.

HF and Don share a tense phone conversation where HF insinuates that Don is not welcome at baby Gen's birthday party, and Don appears to acquiesce to this insinuation. When Don swings by to pick up the boxes, he doesn't even notice Henry's petulant vandalism, in fact, he just trashes the boxes. Don has built his life on not just ignoring his past, but exterminating it, and here, rather than burying his life as Dick Whitman, he buries his life as Don Draper, the unfathomable, inhuman bastard.

With Don's new sober outlook on life, he manages to charm Faye into a date, bringing back some of that classic Draper swagger. The date goes well, and, we again see Don opening himself to the possibility of real intimacy. When Faye propositions him, he rebuffs her and says that taking her to her door is "as far as he can go right now."

The episode ends as Don enters his house for Gene's birthday party (with an awesome elephant) he greets his kids and Betty. Betty snuggles up to Henry Francis, but gives a look that is the opposite of hostile to Don as he picks up Gene and gives him a kiss. The episode ends without any music (although it did begin with a Rolling Stones song, so that was a departure from the norm) much like Lost did whenever it was a particularly good episode.

The stylistic departures seem to reflect Don's departure from the character we've come to know over the past 4 seasons. As Don walks away from his past for the second time and into the volatile 60s, the show appears to be prepared to do the same by abandoning its iconic style to pursue uncharted territory.

Style Hi-lights:

Don in casual wear is always a treat, and his cuffed chinos and plaid shirt were a great, simple combo.

Joey's pink shirt and knit skinny tie

Peggy's blue dress with red pleats

Henry Francis khaki slacks and checkered shirt.

Style Lo-lights:

Don's navy slacks and heavy tweed jacket combo for dinner with Faye.

The lazy art director whose name escapes me's pleated slacks and striped polo

Until next week friends.