* Mad Men doesn’t usually go for this kind of “we know something they don’t know” gag anymore, not since those happy golden bygone days of “there’s no magic machine that makes copies” back in Season One, so I have to admit a twinge of cheap-date delight when I heard “When they finish the 2nd Avenue subway this apartment will quadruple in value.” LOL
* Bobby Draper hates his misaligned wallpaper. I’ll bet.
* “Come Monday morning it’ll all be a dream.” Lovely line from Sylvia.
* I’m not sure where you come down on Ginsberg, but I find him very funny. “Am I interrupting something?” is a great thing to say when you walk in on your old man and the girl he obviously brought home to set you up with. And all the business at his dinner: “I mean, you’re a sexy girl, and you smell great…”; “What am I doing? I ordered soup, I just said that…”; his delayed-reaction “…I am?” when his date tells him he’s handsome…funny and endearing. And he’s a virgin, too!
* Harry Hamlin! Giving Megan the eye, no less. I still ship Megan and Ginsberg, but “Roger with bad breath” would be an interesting road to take.
* Ethan Rom! I’m sorry, William Mapother! Here’s the thing about Lost: It’s very easy to forget in light of the later seasons, which wiped away much of the first few seasons’ early mystery (read: writers tap-dancing as fast as they could) regarding the Island and its inhabitants, but Lost was a terrifying show when it wanted to be, and it often wanted to be. The Lynch comparisons could run a lot deeper than just “It’s a stylish drama on ABC with an overarching mystery and a touch of the supernatural,” is what I’m saying. And some of the performers involved with that side of the show, Mapother among them, take on a similarly luminous/numinous quality to actors from Twin Peaks when you see them elsewhere, as Mad Men has taken advantage of multiple times (Leland Palmer, Shelly Johnson, Winkie’s dream guy). Ethan, I’m sorry, Mapother’s character Randall Walsh winds up being a bit of a joke, or more than a bit, but it’s perfect casting for someone you want to seem unusual in an imposing, slightly upsetting way.
* Tensions run high in House Chaough, I see.
* Very very smart misdirection with the Paul Newman sequence. Make it a joke about how SDCP is far away from the action, have Joan put on her glasses…then have Newman hijack the ceremony to endorse Gene McCarthy…then have a barely intelligible voice in the distance shout out that Martin Luther King has been shot. Even when you think the scene has revealed its true face, there’s another beneath.
* Mad Men does the spread of terrible news as well as anything I’ve ever seen. I got chills as the broadcast started reaching the diner, patrons dropped their silverware, employees collapsed into chairs. Actually, I started to cry. It’s not the first time the show’s done that to me.
* “They’re really still having the awards?” “What else are they gonna do?” Don and Megan stay for her award.
* “Why are you destroying this house?” Oh, Betty.
* Ginsberg’s father’s reaction to the news about King is to slowly put his sweater over his head. That’s awfully easy to relate to.
* It took the episode a while to acknowledge and inquire after the actual feelings of actual black people about King’s death — “Do you think your secretary’s okay?” from Megan was the first, I believe — but its portrayal of that yawning gulf between sympathy and empathy on the part of the white characters toward their black coworkers and acquaintances was sticky and prickly in all the right ways.
* The best reactions, in terms of maybe for a moment making you feel like the world isn’t a gigantic pile of shit:
** Roger: “Man knew how to talk. I don’t know why but I thought that would save him. I thought it’d solve the whole thing.” Roger believes in nothing but the gift of gab.
** Phyllis: “I knew it was going to happen. He knew it was going to happen. But it’s not going to stop anything.”
** Pete: “How dare you. This cannot be ‘made good.’ It’s shameful! It’s a shameful, shameful day!” First of all, he borrowed “shameful” from Trudy, which is deeply sad. Second, Pete’s on the level with this. He’s an asshole in so many ways, but ever since the “Negro TV company” debacle way back when, it’s been clear that he simply cannot comprehend or countenance why anyone would choose to be an asshole in this particular way.
* Harry just gets more loathsome with each episode.
* What a marvelously weird little setpiece Randall Walsh’s acid-casualty ad pitch turned out to be. I loved how even Don’s go-to guys, Stan and Ginsberg, couldn’t hide their amusement. “The ad sales guy didn’t like that?”, Stan openly giggling…man. But the guy’s deadly serious, and every once in a while something upsettingly real comes out: “There is a tear, and in that tear are all the tears in the world. All the animals crying. ” “This is an opportunity. The heavens are telling us to change.”
* Beautiful sound design as Don talks to Peggy on the phone about picking up the kids, then drives them back to his apartment. Phones, alarms, sirens, sewing machines.
* So Ginsberg’s bachelorhood is a sore spot with his father. Ginsberg’s like an exposed nerve in boxer shorts.
* When you see it in the context of an awestruck audience seeing it for the first time, the ending of Planet of the Apes is removed from cliché and camp and familiarity and becomes chilling — literally, this was another chills-up-and-down moment for me — and extremely powerful. In Bobby’s words, “Jesus!”
* “Stop being such a martyr. You’re having the time of your life.” Abe and Bobby both understand the appeal of apocalypse. “Everybody likes to go to the movies when they’re sad.”
* Henry wants to govern on a law & order platform? Oh brother.
* Don’s speech about his kids was…I didn’t see it coming. I’m not sure what to make of it. On a less self-assured show it could come across like a misstep (cf. Catelyn Stark’s similar recent monologue on Game of Thrones), but here…another piece of the puzzle.
* I wondered why Betty’s face fell when Henry told her he couldn’t wait for people to meet her, “really meet her.” Then she held the dress up to her body in the mirror.
* “What if somebody shoots Henry?” “Henry’s not that important.” Oh, Don.
* Don’s on the ledge again.
Tags: Mad Men, reviews, TV, TV reviews
The instant Mapother showed up on-screen, before I even recognized him, I had a viscerally fearful reaction, like I thought he was sure to hurt or kill someone before the episode was over. Then it hit me, where I knew him from, and I was like, “Ooooh, right.”
Seeing Bobby’s mind get blown by Planet was also a treat.
I wonder how many takes they tried before Joan’s hug of Dawn achieved Total Perfect Awkwardness.
Good call about Don being on the ledge. That closing scene on the rooftop gave me visions of him acting out the opening credits for real.
I admit I groaned a bit at the final scene from PLANET OF THE APES – man, talk about underlining your theme with red ink.
I think anyone who’s had body image issues knew exactly why Betty’s face fell as Henry told her he wanted people to meet her. It was such a gut punch moment the subsequent scene with the dress felt superfluous.
I think the body image thing is right-on, but on another level, I think Betty’s distressed at the prospect of revealing herself to people when she doesn’t even know who she is. And as weird and damaging as she is as a mother, she doesn’t get enough credit for being a pretty good wife.
Is it okay to admit I laughed out loud at this one? Not the MLK stuff of course but Don’s solution for babysitting a Bobby who was grounded from watching TV: the movies! Twice! I didn’t think his revelation to Megan was a misstep, just another layer to Don. While parenting is more often a chore for him, we know he loves his kids, especially Sally, but as we saw with her, “I knew you wouldn’t go (to the vigil)”, she’s in her smartass teen years and sees his flaws, so it’s natural he would gravitate to the less judging Bobby. Don being concerned enough about Sylvia to try to track her down in DC was more surprising.
Pete may have some legitimate hatred of racism, but his blowup to Harry was, to me, more about his own loneliness and identifying with King as a man separated from his family. He also probably wanted to get out of the city during the rioting, too.
Peggy almost benefiting from MLK’s assassination with a briefly dipped property value was a nice touch.
What was the instrumental playing at the end? I know I know it but now I need to hear it again.
Christopher: The song at the end is Love Is Blue by Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra. I had to buy it as the episode ended.
Chris, nice call about Pete identifying with King as a man separated from his family. I didn’t get that, and I think it explains his reaction. However, I still think he came off as totally fake. Sean, I think you give him too much credit. What has Pete done to show you that he is as outraged as he says he is? He seemed like he was just showing off like he’s outraged about racism, when really his personal reaction is more about the family thing. He is always vying for status and to be seen as a leader, so he lets off some steam in a “Moral Leader” kind of way.
In Don’s speech about children, did he say that he was suddenly very proud and happy about Bobby? What was Don talking about? He’s proud that his son is emotionally sensitive and caring to other people, including black people? If that’s the explicit message there, that Don’s most proud moment is that his son is nice and not racist at all, then it seems like the story is just “Look at Don, he’s a good man.” Seemed weird.
I read somewhere that “today’s movie [and TV] heroes” aren’t just touch macho men, they’re sensitive guys. That’s Don for you – a big touch macho guy who is emotionally sensitive and deep and emotional. The message of the TV show to dudes would then be: women like guys like this. I think I believe that message.
I have a question. Am I allowed to ask this question? What was the point of the apartment thing? What a let-down. In today’s episode they searched for an apartment, found surprising reasons to get it, used a clever plan to get it, and then received a phone call from the realtor saying they didn’t get it. It was very anti-climactic. Kinda left me hanging there. Maybe an interesting point of the sequence was seeing Peggy get so excited that her BF wants kids, but that happened in the middle, and the ending just fell away. I don’t know, I’m no TV runner, but it felt like a narrative let-down, right?
Ryan, I think you’re right about the apartment thing. It seemed to be more about exploring the power dynamic in Peggy’s and Abe’s relationship. Money is not the issue with her, but she wants to be sure it’s not the issue with him, and would only be happy moving in somewhere if he was emotionally invested in the move and they were on the same page about it. And of course, the idea of starting over with a new family is exciting to her. It’s still interesting to me that you can’t go more than a couple episodes without being reminded of Don’s flaws, but if you’d somehow missed just a couple particular episodes of the series, you wouldn’t even know about the kid Peggy gave away.
Regarding Don’s speech, I thought it was less about his pride about Bobby’s racial sensitivity (or maybe more like innocent openness of spirit?) but wasn’t there also something about how Don really loved his kids when they did something that displayed how different they were from him? I have some issues with whether Don is self-aware enough to give that speech, which refers to his upbringing, while he seems oblivious to how he turns the women around him (in his mind) into whores. But, if we accept that he can give the speech but still have these behavioral blind spots, it does kinda fit that he loves his kids when they’re unique and different from him and not carrying on his poison, given his own self-loathing.