Leave it to Mad Men to give us a montage of women getting dressed, a strip club, and a bikini fashion show and then make us feel guilty for enjoying it.
Much as Myndi extolled the virtues of baby-acting earlier this season, I’m here to praise Chauncey the Dog. His reactions in the scene where Duck finds out his ex-wife is getting remarried are hilarious. He even flings water at the perfect moment. Kudos to Chauncey! I feel like Mad Men is trying to get a new category at the Emmys – Best Performance by a Non-Human or Pre-Verbal Human.
Well, we got our first peek into Duck’s life. As we saw last season, divorce is pretty rare at this time, and I liked the secretary’s inability to figure out how to refer to Duck’s ex. I also liked Duck’s real, very sweet reaction to Chauncey. He was likeable for just a second there.
This week, the focus was on women, with some nods to duality thrown in. (That shot of Pete looking in the mirror where half of his face is obscured in shadow would have been a lot cooler had The Dark Knight not used it multiple times on Harvey Dent, but that was just unfortunate timing.) Unfortunately for our cast, rather than having a daytime and a nighttime side, their two sides are essentially “true” and “false”. Watch the discomfort when the kids appear during Betty’s chat with her Imaginary Stable Boyfriend. That was awkward for everybody. And, sadly, it gives Betty another reason to treat her children like unwelcome strangers in her home.
Pete is in fine form this week. He has a lovely holiday dinner with his brother. Naturally, his brother gets in a few digs, and we’re reminded that Pete apparently doesn’t have any friends. Peggy even disses him at work, in a nice flip-flop from the first season. And I don’t even think Pete was thinking in terms of their affair – he just wanted somebody to tell him what a good job he did. I mean, Duck is usually Pete’s biggest supporter, and their big interaction was Pete suggesting a live-in dog for the office. (Apparently, Pete thinks Sterling-Cooper became a struggling consignment shop at some point.)
But then when Pete meets the rejected Playtex model, he goes right back into Big Wheel mode. In a way, I think it’s how he imagines Don Draper would hit on a woman, and it only works because Pete has a talent for finding women just when their self-esteem has been crushed. And then, when he gets back to her place, the ad on the TV shows an airplane. (I think that was an Air Force recruiting ad, but I don’t know for sure.) So there’s a giant professional failure as well as a reminder of his father’s recent death sitting about eight feet from his head while he’s busy cheating on his wife. Humiliation surrounds him at all times. Also, I can’t help but wonder if his viable sperm are going to get him in trouble here.
I can’t help but think that Peggy’s exclusion from some aspects of the Playtex campaign have more to do with her being a pill than with being a woman. I’m not denying the rampant sexism, but let’s just say Joan were a copy writer instead. She totally would have been invited to the club. Peggy’s going to find it very hard to assert herself in the way she wants, because she not only has to cope with the boys’ club, but also the “Peggy is a stiff” club, and everybody belongs to that club. Notice that the clients were the only ones who seemed terribly excited about heaving her there. The admen, well, they were just waiting for her to make things stop being fun.
You know, Bobbie Barrett is the opposite of every other woman with whom we’ve seen Don have any kind of an ongoing relationship. While she challenges him in business, as soon as they’re in bed, she can’t talk about anything but what a stallion Don Draper is. The other women in Don’s life push his buttons. Even in bed, they break his balls a little. Whether it’s passive-aggressively, like Betty, or actively, like Rachel, they inject reality into the situation every chance they get. Even Midge, his mistress for hire, didn’t let him give in to the fantasy.
I love the way that the adoring looks from his daughter cut Don like a knife. Early on, when he stands as a veteran, I think he’d be OK with his wife and everybody else applauding him, but he actually grimaces when he sees his daughter beaming. We’ve found the one person that Don can’t lie to. And throughout the episode, we see Don becoming increasingly aware of the fact that his wife is, in fact, a woman. In the final scene, his daughter offers not to talk. Considering that only a scene ago, he left Bobbie Barrett tied to a bed for not heeding his earlier advice to that same end, that line hits him hard. That’s some fantastic acting by Jon Hamm in this scene. Whether it’s a moment of self-awareness in regards to his treatment of women or just a silent hope that his daughter can do better for herself, you can see his heartbreak. Whether this leads to any changes for Don, or just a backlog of self-loathing, is anybody’s guess.
Myndi
I loved Chauncey, too, and felt just awful for him when Duck put him out on Madison Avenue so he could have a guilt-free drink or twelve. Mark Moses is a fine actor, and it’s interesting to see another complex character being developed here. Duck keeps racking up the wild goose chases, doesn’t he? You can tell he feels the intense pressure mounting to close a deal, and to keep his underlings’ waning respect. He may have even lost Pete’s loyalty by rejecting the whole “office dog” concept.
Speaking of Pete, wasn’t it kind of odd seeing him be so convivial with Peggy, chummy with his brother and almost charming with the model? Of course, leave it to Mad Men, and Vincent Kartheiser’s masterful portrayal, to bring us back around to Creepy Pete with one leering, almost murderous glare toward Peggy when she joined the guys at the strip club. It was this bizarre mixture of recognition and jealousy…Pete wants Peggy so bad he can taste it, but he knows he can’t have her…again. Is there any possible way that Pete will ever find out he fathered that child?
That strip club scene had many layers. First, you have Peggy coming out of her mousy little shell (and rocking a fabulous Playtex bra), the guys all noticing her in various ways, and the cherry on top–Sal, the closeted gay man, being the most vocally exuberant patron in the whole joint. Methinks thou dost protest too much, Sal!
Don’s back on that dangerous ride of having an established affair that goes beyond random dalliances. They’re planning their liasons and learning more about each other, which of course began last week. However, I still don’t completely get this relationship. I suppose Don has an underlying disdain for all women, and certainly for married ones who have affairs, not to mention the audacity to speak up once in a while. I know I really shouldn’t be surprised that the man who cheats on his wife almost constantly has the balls to be appalled at his wife wearing a bikini to the beach, to the point of calling it “desperate”. I’m a little more surprised at how chastised Betty seemed at this. What happened to the confident woman who flirted with the mechanic for a break on the parts out on the freeway?
I know it was just another brief scene this week, but I cannot say how much I love Roger & Don’s little chats. When Roger asked if Don’s wife knew about Don’s new secretary and if he could be there when she found out, I chuckled. These two are pitch perfect together. You only need seconds to see a rapport and I can only ask for more of their season one carousing, even though I know it might kill poor Roger.
And I loved the Playtex pitch. It was a great campaign, and it was frustrating as a viewer to see the client reject the change that they’d asked the agency to work up. I’ve been in meetings like this, which are completely par for the course, and it’s beyond frustrating. Then again, the client opened a tab by way of an apology, so I’m sure they all got over it.
Don
To begin, we must start with the end. Having a torrid, elicit affair can’t be any fun when ones sweet, innocent daughter is mimicking the bedroom games one plays. For Don Draper, at this moment in the final scene, it was too much. As Don Draper stood shaving, looking at himself in the mirror, he could not bear to look at that man any longer. Save for only a towel, Don Draper was fully exposed, both figuratively and literally. He is realizing that his life, which he spends every moment and every word controlling, is actually spiraling out of control.
The camera work was brilliant in this final scene. As it pulled away we saw a slumped, sullen Don sitting in reflective thought, and then in a mirror, we saw the reverse image of Don Draper. Once again, we see the struggle and duality of man. From Buddhism, we know the duality of man can be seen in five ways – form, consciousness, feeling, thought, and choice. And once again, we see the role of the mind in a man’s life, a theme from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, running throughout Mad Men.
