“Oh, I don’t know. I keep going to a lot of places, and ending up somewhere I’ve already been.”
Don Draper is living out a great lie. Salvatore is living a lie. Pete Campbell is living a lie. Joan is living a lie. Peggy is living a lie. And isn’t advertising, to hear Don Draper explain it, just one big lie?
The story lines are many, and on the surface this season is going to be about how an American advertising firm deals with globalization and the dawn of television. It will be about clashes of culture, a pregnant wife, and two Heads of Accounts. Kenny Cosgrove and Pete Campbell will struggle in a professional environment to advance their own careers while obviously being the lab mice in a maze, performing for management’s amusement. But underneat the story lines a typical TV drama would write, Mad Men is actually going to be about feminism in the white collar world of Manhattan on the eve of America’s sexual revolution. The season will be a further exploration of Pete Campbell’s self loathing and his road to ruin (I’m convinced he’ll kill himself or someone else). And as EJ said, we’re going close in on exactly “who is Don Draper?”
You can watch Mad Men for your reasons, and wonder how they’ll handle the Kennedy assassination, how Don’s marriage is going to play out, and what everyone will say, but I’ll watch it for the psychology and guessing at the inner thoughts of each character. And what’s great about Mad Men is that it can be taken in either way.
And finally, we come to the most magnificent scene in the entire episode (possibly the entire series, thus far). A scene brilliantly delivered and written, and ripe with all the Don Draper genius and loathing we love. On the plane back from Baltimore, you can tell that Salvatore is sweating the fact that Don saw him in a room with a half-dressed man. Salvatore is struggling, big time, wondering if Don is judging him, if Don will tell everyone, hold it against Salvatore, and then wondering what this means for him, his future with his wife, with the firm, with his friends and co-workers, and society in general. Don knows he’s sweating. Don knows Salvatore wants something – approval, disapproval …something. And then Don delivers a monologue to rival the Kodak carousel moment from the finale of Season 1. So amazing was this monologue, I didn’t even catch it until reader L.H. pointed it out to me a few days later. Like many, I chalked it up to the fact Don has indiscretions of his own, what Salvatore does in the bedroom is of no consequence to Don or anyone, and that Don is wise beyond his years. Enlightened. Good night. See you next week. But, no …it was much more.
Remember last season when Peggy had her baby, and Don Draper came to see her in the hospital? What advice did he give her? Make it go away, and move on. We spunkybeaners marveled at Don’s D.N.A. and how that seemed to be his life – do it, make it go away, and move on. Bobbie and Jimmy Barret – he did it, he made it go away, he moved on. His childhood. His time in the war. The problem is, as simple as his life philosophy seems to be, its not as easy in practice, and we all know, in his head, Don has not moved on.
So on the plane ride back from Baltimore, Don knows he needs to address what he saw with Salvatore. Together they lied to the flight attendants and each flirted with one-night stands before the fire alarm squashed their advances. So Don leans over, and Salvatore thinks he knows what’s coming, and Don pitches this campaign:
