* Yeah, the two-hour first episode counts as the first two episodes again. Hey, I don’t make the rules.
* The opening Welcome Wagon scene = orange as FUCK. And Pete and Trudy are BALLIN’. I don’t know why I thought that both of them being very attractive at the same time but to two different sets of people would unite rather than divide them, but I did. Call me a cockeyed optimist.
* That was some stare from Don when Sylvia opened the door. Thousand-yard stare.
* Young Dick Whitman looks like Moe Howard. Didn’t see that coming.
* You know Jon Hamm’s directing when you get a fade from one scene to the next. Hooray!
* “I don’t think about it. They’re both good company.” Don to Sylvia on eating with Dr. Rosen and Megan. That’s…phhhhew, that’s something, Don.
* The Tet Offensive, Munich…miscalculations and underestimations all over this episode. Herb didn’t see Don coming. Stan didn’t see Peggy (or, really, Ted) coming. “This is how wars are won!”
* Peggy’s awkwardness as a boss is endearing in large part because she’s in no way a lovable loser. This is just the one part of it she’s not that good at.
* There were two moments in this episode that made me laugh so hard I actually pumped my fists as if to tell the show “way to go!” The first was the reveal of the blue and green glass partitions walling off the bedroom in Pete’s affair apartment. HOLY SHIT. I kind of imagine the set designer unveiling that to Matthew Weiner and just bringing the house down with it.
* “Sometimes you gotta dance with the one that brung ya.” Oh, Don.
* Pete’s assignation was attractive. Actually, Pete isn’t looking so terrible anymore himself. I think he lost weight?
* Megan’s miscarriage knocked me for a loop. That was an extremely well-crafted scene from top to bottom, in fact. The initial fake-out with the soap-opera storyline, Megan’s adorable red nose, watching Sylvia’s reactions knowing what we know, “I’m such a horrible person,” Sylvia brutally dressing Megan down because of how she was raised (lol), Don giving Sylvia the stare again upon his return home.
* I know the Quest gag bugged Peggy, but her reaction — “Of course, when you want them to be funny, they’re useless” — was so perfectly crushing, all the more so for them not even being there to hear it and her not delivering it to be some epic smackdown, that I feel like she totally triumphed over it, even if she herself doesn’t think so.
* That Jaguar asshole. Ugh. Joan’s eyes as he leaves, and once Don leaves her in his office. 🙁 I think it’s kind of wonderful that Don hates this guy.
* “Jesus christ watching Joan walk into Don’s office, I want to throw a parade for these two human beings” – from my notes.
* No one calling the cops about Brenda’s spousal abuse was crushing.
* “You know, we’re losing the war.” “You wouldn’t know it from looking around here.” Plus ça change.
* Pete’s affair panic was exquisite to behold. All that waiting for the other shoe to drop, all not even knowing if the first shoe dropped.
* “You enjoy how foolish they both look.” “You will feel shitty right up until the point where I take your dress off.” Crash cut to later when he’s doing exactly that. “Because I’m going to do that. You wanna skip dinner? Fine. But don’t pretend.” Don’s confidence in this scene borders on cruelty — “Well then that’s news. Isn’t it.” — and is absolutely magnetic. When Sylvia told the waiter “We’re in a bit of a hurry” I gasped.
* Loved the cut from Trudy walking into her bathroom to Don walking into his apartment.
* Jim Garrison on Carson delayed for a report on the Tet Offensive. The most ’60s film clip ever?
* “If you so much as open your fly to urinate, I will destroy you.” Honestly, I’ve never really thought Trudy as a character did Alison Brie any favors as an actor — separately they both come across like something created in a laboratory to be seen as perfect to men of their era, and when the two are overlaid you don’t get the depth you see in Brie as Annie on Community, where the idea is that her perfectionism made her crazy — but this ferocious scene was a new thing entirely.
* Ted’s seemed so kindly and rational so far this season that it was weirdly comforting to watch him carpe diem with the Heinz ketchup story he gleaned from Peggy. That’s a little more like the Ted who tweaked Don a couple seasons back.
* Second-best thing about Don blowing up Herb the Jaguar Asshole’s local ad campaign pitch: Herb was too stupid to realize he did it on purpose.
* BEST thing about Don blowing up Herb the Jaguar Asshole’s local ad campaign pitch, and the second thing in the episode that made me laugh so hard I raised my fists aloft in triumph: Roger smiling at it.
* Is it just me or did we get a li’l bit of realness from Brown-Nose Bob when he talked about the family business?
* “It’s all about what it looks like, isn’t it?” Poetic Pete is good Pete.
* Don watched his pregnant mom fuck. Okay, sure.
* Don collapses outside his front door. In Roger’s words, “It means we gave the Germans whatever they wanted to make them happy, but it just made them want more.” In his own words, “And so we keep saying yes, no matter what, because we didn’t say no to begin with.”
Tags: Mad Men, reviews, TV, TV reviews
However low Don sinks, there is still an aspect of nobility left. He’s still Joan’s knight, though part of his blowing the Jaguar pitch has to be because he just doesn’t like Herb and doesn’t like being told what to do. Don probably doesn’t realize it yet but although this was an intentional fail, it’s part of a mini-streak of them.
Pete may have lost weight, but also, sideburns are slimming.
Another episode where holidays are significant, though in this case, it’s a Vietnamese holiday. I love the episode title, The Collaborators, even if it’s kind of on-the-nose. It hardly even retains its meaning of people working together to create art; here it’s all scheming, deceiving or setting things unintentionally in motion (Stan telling Peggy about Heinz).
I read an interview complaining that so far, Sylvia hasn’t been much of a character, but I thought there was some great stuff going on with her when she’s stretched beyond her ability to be sympathetic to Megan. She likes her without wanting to, but she’s also bitterly jealous while trying to stay emotionally unattached to Don, and of course, no matter what bad things we do, we still have vestiges of morality and can still judge others.
Ken Cosgrove is still a one account pony and is going to have to up his game to stop Bob Benson. Really, he just needs to show his value to Don, who has no need of a debased toilet paper errant boy like Bob.
This was a rarely seen but not new view of Trudie. She’s kind of a Hillary Clinton type. She is clear about how she wants her life to work and will ignore a lot more than most in order to preserve the illusion, but she’s got her limits. I like that she has the same opportunities to cheat as Pete and isn’t interested at all, or at least not with her neighbors. The 50 mile radius.