Now, she’s getting high at parties in abandoned warehouses, learning about Malcolm X, making out with social activists in closets and telling off poor, confused Allison (“Your problems are not my problems.”)
Peggy’s been through so much, and some things came full circle tonight. Namely, she found out that Pete and Trudy were expecting and it hit her harder than she seemed ready for at that moment. Being Peggy, though, she went straight to Pete, offered him seemingly genuine congratulations and returned to her office to literally bang her head against her desk. It was another instance where the chemistry between these two was off the charts. So much is spoken in just glances. And, as it has been since episode one, we kind of know it isn’t right, but we are mesmerized nonetheless.
Is Peggy starting to regret giving up her baby, even though she must realize that had she kept him, her life would bear no resemblance to the one she’s living at SCDP? I think there will always be part of her that thinks she could have approached everything differently, and maybe even guilted Pete into “doing the right thing”. But she knows that she made the right choices, given all of the factors in play, by focusing on her career and letting her sister raise her son. She was in no position mentally to care for that child, and was at least smart enough to know that. Plus, we have yet to see Peggy truly longing for the baby in any way; she is at peace with having given him up. What still gets under her skin is that she could have had something with Pete and the fact that Trudy is now pregnant means that door has probably closed for good.
Speaking of Trudy, isn’t she becoming quite the little barracuda? I think we all agreed at the end of last season that Trudy would likely be an asset to Pete and his colleagues at the new agency, but we weren’t sure how it would extend beyond bringing lunch for the gang. (“A conflict? Yes, I’m familiar with the term.”) As it turns out, it was Trudy who talked Daddy into taking the Clearasil business to Pete, and now it’s Trudy again who is orchestrating just the right setting for Pete to ambush her father (“he’ll be so happy, he won’t even feel the knife go in.”) into either searching for a new agency or giving him all of Vicks Chemical, which is a much bigger deal than a pimple cream account. It seems like having Trudy in his corner energizes Pete around his father-in-law.
Watching Pete and Peggy go their separate ways at the elevators on the way to lunch was poetic. Peggy still longs for him, but knows it’s done. Pete feels comfortable with the old boy network, but there’s definitely a part of him that knows he’s missing out on something by not moving in some younger circles. As much of a sociopath as creepy Pete can be, he is smart.
His lunchtime maneuvering with Kenny was evidence of that, handing him the Clearasil biz for his new agency (Ken’s left Sterling Cooper, I mean, McCann) while building a bridge for the future as any good ad man would do. I love how Harry’s new role is to
throw in a new Yiddish word every week (this week’s was “Gonif”, which means “thief”) and disappear.
EJ
“How the hell did this get sad so fast?” – Freddie Rumsen
Let me just say, best laugh of the week was Don talking about how new regulations mean that they can no longer shoot smokers from a low angle – “anything that makes them appear superhuman”.And yep, it’s a low-angle shot as he’s talking and smoking. Hee. (Close runner-up was Joey talking about Trudy Campbell – “I would get her so pregnant”.)
There’s not a reference to Don and Lane’s Excellent Adventure, but I feel like Lane’s first time going out whoring will still have ramifications. And the only real reference to Don’s trip was the note and picture from Anna. It was a sweet little moment, and it might be the last we hear from her.(Hey, here’s a thing. If she dies, nobody’s going to know to contact Don. He won’t know until he tries to contact or visit her.) Watch Don read the note while at his desk, with other people in the room, and then actually leave the picture out where somebody could possibly see it. Is Don just tired of hiding? Is he taking the Bert Cooper “Who cares?” approach?L.A.
Every time Allison appears on screen now, everything is so fraught with tension. But it’s so perfectly one-sided. Don either really believes that it isn’t a big deal, or he’s really good at carrying himself like that’s the case. So when she shows up for the focus group testing at SCDP, I get a little hole in my stomach. That said, I love watching Dr. Faye Miller. (Who also played Christopher’s wife on The Sopranos.) I love her calculatedly casual style. This is a woman who wants her name misspelled so she can correct it and make the focus group feel at ease. The way she talks to other women is vaguely patronizing – like she’s addressing a less-evolved group who don’t realize that they are a rung or two down. I think she’s intended to represent the new breed – just one more reminder of the eventual extinction of Don and the other old school ad men. It’s not going to be whores and martini lunches much longer – it’s going to be focus groups and psychology papers.
By the way, Freddie is hysterical as he watches the group. “I wish I had a Danish.” I mean, his zipper sonata from last season was pretty great, but he’s a funnier guy already this season. I never thought I’d be happy to have him back.
Anyway, the focus group scene is fascinating to me. The rest of the Mad Men Roundtable
Crew work in advertising, so this is not something I’m as familiar with. But the way the focus group just starts plumbing the depths of their own psyches in the service of cold cream is the sort of weird game that just blows my mind. People do this! Like Peggy says, “half the time somebody cries”. Poor Allison loses it, because she’s been walking a tightrope to begin with.
It’s awesome when Peggy goes to console Allison. First off, Allison makes it clear that everybody assumes that Don and Peggy have had a relationship. And Peggy does not like any suggestion that she slept her way to the upper-middle. With everything that’s changed about her in the past couple of years, she still takes pride in the fact that she earned her position by working hard and doing excellent work. Second, I love that Allison refers to Don as “a drunk”. Not that I love the idea of alcoholic Don, but I love that people are starting to perceive him that way – it makes things a little more interesting if the hero-worship isn’t there. In fact, at this point it’s the viewers who are mythologizing Don, rather than the people in his world. It seems like we’re learning a lot about how the rank-and-file of SCPD view the main characters. It’s like we’re hearing office gossip.
Later, Allison tries to hash it out with Don. It’s the first time he acknowledges that something happened. He’s so guarded here, without offering anything of himself. (I know, right? That’s so unlike him!) And we don’t really know enough about Allison to know exactly what their encounter meant to her. For all we know, she was a virgin before Don – remember how we watched Peggy’s collapse play out after she slept with Pete? We’re seeing it again, but this time we have only a passing familiarity. We’ve seen people devastated by one bad choice in the past, but now we’re just seeing it in our peripheral vision.
The final blow is when Don tells her to write her own letter of recommendation. And I honestly think he’s trying to be helpful here – “Talk yourself up as much as you want, and I’ll agree to it”. But to her, he’s refusing to give her any kind of acknowledgment. He’ll agree with what she says about herself, but he damn sure won’t offer up anything about her of his own volition.
Don, who lives in the most depressing apartment outside of every apartment ever seen on Heroes, sits down to type a letter when he gets home. And it’s a matter of some urgency – he doesn’t even take off his hat and coat. It’s a letter to Allison – a letter of apology. He doesn’t get farther than “…I’m very sorry. Right now my life is very” before he balls it up and throws it away. Still, this is Don writing an apology. A piece of paper including his admission of wrongdoing. That is not something we ever would have seen Don do in the past. It’s weird how seeing Don do things that normal people would do is really worrisome, isn’t it?
Finally, Don has it out with Faye Miller again, and once again, he’s bringing a lot of his own baggage in. I especially like his insistence that “just because somebody did something before doesn’t mean they’ll do it again”. He’s a man in the business of predicting people’s behavior, insisting that predicting their behavior is impossible. Because if it is, then things are never going to get better. But if future behavior is a mystery that nobody can analyze, then Don can fix his life. He can become better.
Interesting that an episode titled “The Rejected” is the first one this season not to have a woman turn down Don’s advances.
Finally, the old man and his wife in Don’s hallway (“Did you get pears?” “We’ll discuss it inside”) deserve their own spinoff.
