The man in the gray flannel suit.
Perich: Has this season felt slow to anyone else?
Most of the plot points have revolved around the consequences of last season’s actions. Betty coming to terms with her divorce; the SCDP crew adapting to life in a smaller firm; Don shedding the last vestiges of his identity. In terms of actual motion forward, we haven’t seen much. There’s certainly been a lot of character growth – Pete coming into his own, Peggy becoming more sexually confident, Don crying – but not a lot of plot points.
I say this not as a complaint but as a seed for thought. I still contend that Mad Men is the best thing currently on television. But there hasn’t been much plot this season. Could this herald a new trend of intense, well-crafted character dramas with ensemble casts? Or does it mean that you can sell soap opera to anyone, provided the cinematography’s good and the suits are nice?
Belinkie: Actually, I felt the exact opposite way. Last season seemed slow to me. I admired Mad Men and enjoyed it a lot of the time, but it seemed to be treading water. One of the big stories was Don’s flirtation with the mysterious Conrad Hilton… which went precisely nowhere. There was the office politics about Sterling Cooper’s new British overlords, which I just couldn’t get swept up in. The big bombshell was Betty finding out the truth about her husband, and that just seemed very pre-ordained. She felt betrayed and wanted a divorce… no duh.
You mention that the plot points of this season all stem from the actions of last season. I agree – last season was laying the boring groundwork for this season, which I think is the series’ best so far. Seeing Don Draper dealing with single life is great. Seeing the Mad Men struggle to keep their fledgling agency afloat is great. And the flashback episode that showed how Don broke into the ad game was freaking genius.
I guess this shirt is going to be valuable now. So long, Burt.
Perich: If the past seasons have been about breaking out of preconceived notions of what your life is supposed to be, S4 has been about defining what’s next. So much of growing up is rebellion: breaking away from the past. But after the dust settles and the battle’s won, we still have to wake up and go to work every day. Do we make a new life for ourselves? Do we fall back into old habits? Who is this new identity that we’re discovering?
With Peggy and Pete, the change seems natural, because they’re very young themselves. They’re in that phase when they should be forging an adult identity. Pete has lost his father (S2) and he still wants to take advantage of the ties that wealth and connection allow him (S3, S4). But he’s defining himself through his work. And not just by having a lucrative job that will provide for his family – note how he turns down that offer from Chaough. He likes being a partner. He takes enough pride in it to call Roger out on being lazy. He also takes enough pride in it to gloat when Ken shows up. So it’s not all admirable, but it’s character.
How bad can a birthday be if you wake up next to Don Draper? Okay, he's a little covered in vomit. Still, happy birthday.
Peggy is already defining herself as a “career woman” as S4 kicks off. Now it’s just a question of living with the consequences of that choice. She’s forced to confront that choice directly, and memorably, in “The Suitcase” – choosing between a birthday dinner with her boyfriend and staying in the office. She also has to choose between a conventional romantic life (courtship, engagement, marriage, kids) and the bohemian life of 60s Greenwich Village hipsters. The process of discovery has been rocky for her, but she’s stayed true to what she wants throughout.
The change has been dramatic for Don because Don is, notionally, an adult. And yet he never really had a childhood, not a pleasant one anyway, and what little he had he wants to repress. Free of Betty and his children, he has the opportunity to date around. Women present themselves to him: his secretary Allison, his fetching neighbor, the actress Bethany van Nuys, Dr. Faye, his new secretary Megan. It’s an adolescent fantasy: rich, single, living on your own in the big city. And yet we see how hollow it is. The dingy apartment, the drunken one-night stands, the lost contact with his children.
Don gets a clean break with his past when Anna dies. With her gone, he’s free to be whoever he says he is. And, as the final episode showed us, Don is happy being the man he was before. Don Draper is the type of man (as predicted by Dr. Faye) who marries his secretary. Or the model on his photoshoot. And yet he hasn’t remained completely inert. He’s drinking less. He respects Peggy and Pete more. He’s growing a little more wary of Roger – the man’s a friend, but he’s also a mirror that shows the future. And he’s come to terms (for now) with Betty.
Belinkie: I kind of worry that Mad Men bobbled the dismount after a stellar season.
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If Miss Blankenship had lived, this never would have happened.
Don marrying his secretary is clearly SUPPOSED to be disappointing, and the viewers are supposed to groan in horror along with every single character on the show. But I’m wondering, are we really excited to see how that plays out over next season? Megan seems a lot less interesting than Faye, and I have to imagine marrying his secretary doesn’t work out any better for Don than it did for Roger. It just seems like Don’s disillusionment with her is preordained, and won’t be very exciting to watch. I’m sure the writers will surprise us, but I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to see Megan trying to be a copywriter and Peggy being frustrated with her. Meh, I say.
- Sally’s first boyfriend had kind of a tame exit. This is the kid who announced his attraction to her by breaking into her house and vandalizing her kitchen. And we know that Sally’s got certain fledgling, um, urges. I’m not saying I wanted them to run away together and have sex in a park somewhere. But for two unstable kids, they seemed to take Betty’s attempts to keep them apart pretty meekly. Sally doesn’t try to sneak out to meet him again? Neither of them go for a first kiss? Think of it this way: Sally doesn’t have a single scene with Betty in the finale. Considering the fireworks between them this season, I find that disappointing.
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Soon to be even curvier, somehow.
Joan is indeed still pregnant, as was speculated on throughout the internet. Friend-of-the-site Amanda Marcotte has been blogging about Mad Men, and she was hoping this wasn’t true, largely because women on TV always seem to consider abortion but then decide against it. I don’t love it because I think Joan being pregnant with Roger’s baby is too soap opera, not to mention an echo of what happened with Pete and Peggy. It’s another plotline I’m not looking forward to.
- Finally, this episode didn’t carry through on the exciting promise of the last episode. Don’s letter was a bold move that appropriated some counterculture mojo to rebrand them as cool and cutting edge. I expected it to lead to some big new clients, or at least small new clients who wanted something new. But it’s been weeks since they lost Lucky Strikes, and so far the letter hasn’t worked its magic. Sure, they got Cancer, but that was kind of obvious. If the letter was indeed an advertisement for SCDP, it doesn’t seem to have impressed anybody. The new account Peggy nabbed in this episode was nabbed the old-fashioned way. I still think SCDP may get with the times and start producing stuff that’s edgy before long, but the finale certainly didn’t point in that direction.
But on the other hand, this episode was definitely a shocker. I won’t speak for everyone on the internet, but I certainly didn’t see Don’s engagement coming (and certainly not to THAT girl). So any worries about the direction Mad Men is going are probably unfounded; Mad Men never goes where you expect it to.
... but as a lovely parting gift, you get two tickets to the Golden Globes!
Perich: Okay, to take your points in order…
- I like your disappointment with Megan more than the disappointment the AVClub Commenters have with Megan. Then again, I like our commenters better than the AVClub’s commenters anyway. That being said, Don’s (hypothetical) marriage to Dr. Faye was more likely to end unhappily than Don’s (until-last-week-hypothetical) marriage to Megan. Faye kept challenging him. She kept prodding him to revisit his past and confront the things that bothered him. And Don can’t marry someone like that. Don’s wife has to be Mrs. Donald Draper – beautiful, warm, supportive, a good mother and with that occasional hint of cleverness that keeps him entertained. Earlier this season, Don was presented with a choice between Faye and Bethany. Megan is the synthesis of those two – young, attractive, compassionate, smart and not quite predictable. Don’s always hedged his bets until the last possible second. Megan is the natural outgrowth of that tendency.
- You’re right that Betty and Sally not having a scene together was a missed opportunity. Part of that, I fear, comes from Matthew Weiner wanting to give the moral for Betty – “Just because you’re unhappy doesn’t mean everyone else has to be!” – to his son, the actor who plays Glen. But if we take it as deliberate, it’s part of the same Betty-as-child arc that’s been playing out this whole season. Betty sleeps in Sally’s room while Sally’s in California. Betty and Sally can’t confront each other because Betty can’t take that direct of a look at herself.
- It is a little soap opera. Amanda’s point is apt. One of the easiest ways to inject drama on a TV serial is to add a pregnancy or a cancer diagnosis. All right – nine months of B plot! That being said, I think this is about as pro-choice a storyline as the More Sixties Than The Sixties Mad Men will give us. Joan had the option to get an abortion. She chose not to go through with it. She’s been portrayed since S2 as desiring the typical paths of a female career – marry well, have a family – so this decision is at least consistent. If a little backward. But if S5 contains a scene of Dr. Rapist shaking Joan by the shoulders and yelling, “AM I THE FATHER?” and Joan running away in tears, I’ll be sorely disappointed.
- Would you have been happy with a white knight riding in and saving SCDP? The big speculation, given that we’ve all known this episode was called “Tomorrowland” for months, was that SCDP would land Disney. That would have been exciting, sure, but it would also have been highly atypical of the show. When Draper landed Hilton for Sterling Cooper, that was more of a feather in Don’s cap than a sea change for the agency. It also introduced as many complications as it did rewards: Don’s odd hours, Don having to sign a contract, Don’s father issues. I’m happy with this because it puts our protagonists’ backs against the wall. What hope there is comes in small doses – a quarter-million in billings won’t save the ship, but it “broke the streak.” I expect we’ll see an even smaller workforce next season and a continuing struggle for new business. Which is fine. If SCDP isn’t The Little House that Lucky Strike Built, then who are they? That’s the question everyone’s asked in S4.
I’d like to buy the world a home and furnish it with love,
Grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.
I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,
I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.
This is two years after Woodstock. Madison Avenue works fast. You can see the connection to Draper’s letter. He’s taking the language of youth and rebellion, and making it a business strategy. He’s PRETENDING to be something heartfelt and genuine, when he’s really cynical and calculating. He’s ahead of his time.
But the finale gives no indication that his “Conquest of Cool” strategy is going to work. The account Peggy lands doesn’t want a way to appeal to her bohemian friends – the ideas she pitches to the pantyhose company seem cutesy and quaint. You asked if I wanted a white knight to save SCDP with a giant account. No, I wouldn’t say that. What I did want was some indication that Don’s letter hit a nerve and pointed them in a new direction. I wanted one small new account, but the kind of account that the old SCDP would never have landed. I wanted a sense that the advertising game was starting to change. I’m sure it’ll come next season, but that was absent from the finale.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfU17niXOG8
Perich: Is there really a youth culture yet? Do the youth know enough to know they’re a market force? I get the vague impression that, in 1965, there were a lot of parties in Greenwich Village lofts and angry nerds writing manifestos for the Voice and their local equivalent. But we’re just witnessing the beginnings of a movement. Don comments on the “Berklee thing” when he hangs out with Anna’s young friend in California (Episode 3). I think we have to wait until the U.S.’s Vietnam presence escalates for this to become more prominent.
The biggest signs we saw of the ad game changing were Bert Cooper retiring in a huff (“You there! Get my shoes!”) and Roger Sterling being shuffled quietly to the side. Out with the old, in (eventually) with the new.
Goodnight lamp.
Belinkie: Because my college copy of Conquest of Cool is in my parents’ attic, along with my old MC Escher posters and Phish tapes, I’ll let the commenters address when Madison Avenue started trying to market to kids. Let’s move on to the future Mrs. Don Draper. You say that he could never be happy with Faye, because she challenged him and encouraged him to grow as a person. But WASN’T he happy with Faye for a while? He courted her like a grownup, even putting off that first trip to the bedroom (before they broke the lamp). He told her the truth about his past, and she accepted him for who he REALLY was. It seemed to me like Don was happier with Faye than he ever was with Betty. So what happened? Why did he suddenly, over the course of one episode, fall in love with Betty 2.0? He seems to have chosen to revert to who he was, rather than evolve into somebody new. Any particular reason he gave up on the new Don Draper?
Perich: I didn’t say Don couldn’t be happy with Faye. I just said he couldn’t marry her. Mrs. Don Draper has to fit a certain role: good with kids, beautiful, supportive, interesting. But not challenging. Don needs a wife who’ll buy the beer she sees in an in-store display, serve it to clients at dinner, and then be quietly civil when she realizes she was an object lesson (remember Betty in S1?).
Besides, Don was happy with Faye. She helped him out of a tough spot. She served her purpose. Now he’s done with her.
Blame Canada?
Don has had his eye on Megan ever since Ep10 (“Hands and Knees”). The episode ended with him looking at the Beatles tickets on his desk, then looking up at Megan as she applied her makeup for a night out. The two of them got together in the next episode (“Chinese Wall”), were friendly but adult about it in Episode 12, and are back in bed in Episode 13. That’s at least three months of time in the show. Falling in love with someone over three months isn’t common, but it’s not unheard of.
California cast a spell on Don. It always does. It’s sunny, it reminds him of the past, his kids are happy there. And Don has always been susceptible to the power of marketing. That’s what makes him so good at it.
Belinkie: And here’s my big question: where do we go from here? Drama is all about characters changing and evolving. There certainly can be drama in characters that CAN’T change and evolve – just ask Samuel Beckett. But I don’t think Season 5 can be about Megan turning into Little Miss Bitter when her Prince Charming isn’t all he was, um, advertised to be. There’s got to be more to it then Don just getting bored and flirting with ANOTHER pretty secretary. Right? Even though Don thinks he’s going back to the way things were, he can’t, can he? There are no fresh starts.
Perich: Don, as a character, is not going to change. At least not much. He will not make it out of the Sixties intact. But everyone around him is going to change. That’s the show’s tragic arc: that a desirable man with his finger on the pulse of the culture can’t keep up with it. Note how the partners react when Don announces his engagement. It’s a room full of blank faces.
Belinkie: You feel that Don Draper, a man who rose to the top because of his ability to reinvent himself, will get his comeuppance because of his inability to change with the times. After his proposal to Megan, I’ll reluctantly second that, and add that next season Peggy finally eclipses him. I’m not saying she ousts him as partner or anything, but she will create a brilliant ad that establishes her as a rising star, and it will be the kind of ad Don could never make. Then again, the show is ALSO about how hard it is to be a women in the sixties, so maybe Peggy doesn’t get the kind of success she deserves after all.
Raise your hand if you want to see these three team up to solve mysteries. Yeah, I thought so. Let's call it MadMoiselles.
Hey John, you ever notice how the Mad Men writers seem to find the female characters way more interesting than the male characters? Think about all the great roles for women: Peggy, Joan, Betty, Sally, Faye, etc. On the male side, you’ve got Don… and then who else? Roger, Pete, and Lane are the main others, and they’re all often played for comic relief. Maybe a better way to put it is that the women are significantly more relatable and empathetic.
Perich: I haven’t noticed that myself. I love all the male roles. Pete and Roger have depth to them, even when they’re not tossing off one-liners. Bert Cooper is the “Ralph Wiggum” of the partnership, if anybody. (I base that off a comment made by a Simpsons writer that Ralph Wiggum was the hardest character to write for, because every line out of his mouth had to be hilarious). I think both the male and female roles are interesting.
Perhaps the female roles seem more interesting because they’re confronting an elephant in the room – the subtle ways that men use power to keep women quiet – without resorting to cliches or shrillness. They’re a remarkably realistic depiction of women pushing at the boundaries of gender limits. If I had been pitched a show about “women trying to balance their careers and their personal lives,” I probably would not have been interested. (That says more of me than it does of the show, I think)
The lawnmower man.
Let’s talk a bit about the minor roles.
I’m glad Ken Cosgrove’s back. He’s always been the character with whom I most identify: works in marketing, trying to make it as a writer, kind of a douchebag. But this season gave him a bit of backbone. He calls Pete out on sniping him behind his back (did anyone buy Pete’s apologies?). He apologizes profusely when he has to abandon dinner with his in-laws over work. He treats Peggy as a real partner – she’s the happiest one to see him back, and they nail that panty-hose pitch. Plus, he has a life outside of work. He’s a contrast to the career men Pete and Don.
(I don’t think Weiner envisioned this role for Cosgrove from the beginning. He’s just a handy one to fill it, given how little we’ve seen of him otherwise)
What do you think about Cosgrove? Or Harry Crane, for that matter? Or Lane Pryce?
Belinkie: At first I was annoyed that Ken ended up back in the office, because it seemed so artificial that every single character from the original Sterling Cooper wound up working for the new Sterling Cooper. In the real world, people come and go, and old friends end up working for rival agencies. I sort of liked having Ken elsewhere. But I think in the finale, they’ve started to make him into one of the few actual nice guys on the show. He loves his wife and won’t exploit her for business purposes. He treats Peggy as an equal. He’s good at his job but keeps it in perspective. He doesn’t even seem to have a drinking problem! In a show where it’s taking for granted that all the men are selfish egomaniacs, Ken seems refreshingly out of place.
Still lazy after all these years.
Lane was a nice surprise this season. Last year, he was kind of an antagonist – a foreigner who took over Sterling Cooper and put our beloved Mad Men through the wringer. But this year, he’s become one of my favorites. The episode where he used a steak as a belt buckle, watched Godzilla, and then had sex with a prostitute was pretty amazing. And hey, kudos to him for dating a Playboy bunny.
I have to admit, I was hoping that after Roger lost Lucky Strikes, he would find a way to redeem himself. He’s sort of a fan favorite, and we hate to see our favorites feeling that miserable. My fantasy was that he’d dig deep, turn on the charm and the cunning, and either get that account back or another one just like it. But nope, that’s not how Mad Men works. Roger is, in fact, worthless. I don’t expect him to find redemption – sort of the opposite.
Perich: So after last season’s recap, I made a bunch of predictions to what Season 4 would bring. Weiner jumped the clock ahead to 1965 just to spite me, so no joy there. But do we want to take a stab at Season 5?
Belinkie: Don’t look at me. Last season, I had all sorts of theories about Draper’s new agency doing some work for Nelson Rockefeller, thereby giving the writers an excuse to have him interact with Henry Francis. No joy. The one thing I’m sure about is nothing that I predict about Season 5 will actually happen. I should probably take advantage of this by predicting what I secretly DON’T want to happen, thus making sure it doesn’t. But instead, I’m going to make some real predictions, just for fun.
Okay, what have you got?
Perich: Roger re-enlists on a dare, is shipped off to Vietnam, and confesses his cuckoldry to Dr. Rapist. Joan quits SCDP in a rage after Lane drunkenly tries to bounce a quarter off her ass and gets a job at Ms. Magazine as a secretary. A chance remark by Sally leads to Jeff Beck getting fired from The Yardbirds. Ted Chaough and Peggy have a brief fling, but when Chaough steals her idea for the Palmolive account, she brains him with Don’s Cleo. She enlists the help of Duck and Joyce to cover for Chaough, sending out memos and ducking in and out of offices in a trenchcoat and hat; by the time the fraud is exposed, she’s re-signed three clients to another ten million in earnings. Pete discovers that he’s been hypnotized by Communists to assassinate Presidential candidate Richard Nixon. Megan and Betty get in a catfight that lasts for three episodes, then is dropped without any meaningful resolution. After a long, intense struggle, highlighted with flashbacks to his youth, Don gives up chocolate. And Bert Cooper, Paul Kinsey and Sal Romano move in to a walk-up in Alphabet City. Hijinks ensue.
Belinkie: I don’t see Don giving up chocolate, but the rest seems plausible. Let’s write another 5,000 words about it next year.
