* “Not in primetime.” Don sees bad things as important only to the extent that they’re well marketed.
* “I made the biggest mistake of my life.” “I hate actresses.” The truth comes out in jest?
* Is Don still good at his job? This is something Molly Lambert has been calling into question all season long, and I’ve been skeptical of her skepticism, but when the first words out of your mouth when you sit down at a partners’ meeting you forgot was taking place are “Are we done here?”, it makes one wonder.
* What a bunch of babies, arguing about the initials of the agency. I love how long that was drawn out — well past the point of it being a conversation worth having.
* Cutler’s bit about how delay in renaming the agency “will take it out of our hands and leave it up to the world” has the sound of him realizing he needs to take charge of the merger by any means necessary if “his side” is to come out on top, even if he doesn’t realize this is what he’s realizing just yet.
* “Leave the drudgery to Ted Chaough and the rest of the underlings.” Plenty of us-and-them from the other side, too, if Roger’s any indication.
* “Be slick. Be glib. Be you!” Point #1: Roger sure idealizes Don, doesn’t he. Point #2: That’s what the ideal Don looks like to Roger.
* “Our biggest challenge is not to get syphilis.” Boy oh boy, lots of good lines in this episode. It’s a Roger showcase, in part, so that makes sense. Sterling Silver-Tongued rides again.
* Everything about the blow-up between Cutler and Ginsberg was, like, this season in a nutshell — its unique, non-marquee players and conflicts given the spotlight. Stan’s strategic retreat (“This is my stop.”), Ginsberg’s hyperbolic angst, Cutler’s sociopathy, Bob Benson To The Rescue…what a strange little microcosm.
* “WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS DOWN HERE! GO BACK UPSTAIRS!” She doesn’t even go here!
* Yes, you could smell the wood burning as Joan shifted gears from thinking she was on a date to realizing she was on a business dinner, but it was no less satisfying for seeing the gears turn. The woman gave Harry Crane the hard sell, for god’s sake. She’s a professional, and given enough time by herself and by the agency, she’ll be a good professional.
* “You’re not going anywhere.” “I was, but then you appeared.” Cutler had previously attempted to banish BOB, but it is not his custom to go where he is not wanted. “I believe in you, Bob.” Oh, Jim — especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon.
* Does Pete even realize how insufferable he’s become? I get it — he feels he’s Cassandra, and his warnings are going unheeded. But he’s really that oblivious to Joan, with whom he’d appeared to have something of a rapport this season? His tirade at the end of the episode indicates that this has something to do with clinging to the Rules. Perhaps you can see some continuity between this and his reaction to the murder of Martin Luther King earlier in the season: Both events violated the way these things are supposed to work.
* Peggy gives good stank face.
* Wow, Roger and Don and Harry are really staring into the abyss with those wingnut Carnation execs. Who was scarier to you, the cackling “Democrats are over” guy or the fire-and-brimstone “Dutch Reagan is a patriot” guy?
* Adults don’t eat cereal, but hippies don’t wear makeup. The generation gap as demographic research. “What if we were to say we find the conflict unresolvable?”
* “We believe in the wholesomeness of both your intentions and your products,” says Don. The professional is political.
* Joan and Peggy’s relationship may be the trickiest in the whole show, because they were never clear-cut enemies and thus it’s hard to see them as clear-cut friends. Each resents, envies, admires, and enjoys the other in equal measure for different things.
* Bob’s listening to self-help recordings in his decorationless office. WHAT COULD GO WRONG
* Ginsberg, with characteristic calmness: “I’m a thug, I’m a pig, I’m a part of the problem. ‘Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.'” If this is what he’s like pitching Manischewitz, I’m glad SDCP never picked up Volkswagen.
* Another hasty retreat from Rizzo: “I can’t watch this.”
* And another bizarre, protean performance from Bob Benson. The mystery of Bob is more confounding because it’s not the usual “mystery” where the show headfakes in one direction only to reveal the opposite. It’s not really faking in any one direction at all.
* This is Don’s happening, baby, and it freaks him out!
* My contention is that this Boogie Nights/Austin Powers/Dragnet drug episode/”Mama Told Me Not to Come” Hollywood party was deliberately cartoonish on the part of the show. Danny’s return as a ridiculous homunculus avatar of ’60s LA, the outfits straight out of Hair‘s wardrobe department, the hookah, the pool, the bikini girls, the one-named zoned-out ingenues — if Don nearly collapses in as prefab a version of the counterculture as this, what hope does he have amid the real thing? This despite him being a more efficient mental codeshifter than Roger, who spends the party trying to reenact his bullying of Burt Peterson with a guy who could have hooked him up with Warner Bros.
* Don conjures up a pliant, pregnant, I would assume unemployed/unemployable Megan, and a maimed, dead soldier. These are the kids today, and this is how Don feels when he thinks of them.
* “My wife thinks I’m MIA, but I’m actually dead.” Chills. “Dying doesn’t make you whole. You should see what you look like.” MAJOR chills. That’s a horrifying line. “Man overboard!” Straight-up Rosemary’s Baby dream-sequence “Typhoon! Typhoon!” shit.
* Roger saved Don’s life, so I ship them now.
* “The job of your life is to know yourself. Sooner or later you’ll love who you are.” Through acid, Roger has gotten to know that he is an actual child. He’s perfectly happy about it.
* Good to see Creeper Peggy back in action — now with intercom powers!
* Peggy saves Joan with the power of copywriting.
* SC&P. Pete’s right: Don’s been reeled in without even feeling the hook in the eye.
* I laughed out loud at the final sequence of Pete smoking a joint in slow motion to the accompaniment of Janis Joplin. Pure Scorsese, and in Mean Streets Scorsese was one of the first filmmakers (preceded by Dennis Hopper on Easy Rider, and Kenneth Anger on Scorpio Rising if you wanna go there) to replace a score or original music with found pop songs, just like the exec Don was talking to at the party was talking about. Thank you, Film Studies major, for giving me a good laugh.
Tags: Mad Men, reviews, TV, TV reviews
Don’s really losing it and it can be painful to watch. I thought his hashish hallucination in this episode was more powerful than his deranged scrambling in “The Crash.”
What do you think of the theory that Megan Draper is going to end up like Sharon Tate?
Discounting Stan and Ginsberg’s blink-and-miss-it heart to heart during the latter’s breakdown, Meredith’s delivery of Peggy’s fake message was the comedy moment of the night for me. “…JOAN. ANDREW HAYES FROM AVON. IS ON THE PHONE FOR YOU.”
Do you think Cutler really did receive an envelope addressed to three dead partners (“Sterling [Roger’s father], Gleason, and Pryce”), or did he just make that up to make a point?
Do you really think Roger missed out on Warners by taking down Danny? I never got the impression that there was a single percent chance Danny was going to capitalize on anything.
Also, American Graffiti. Same year as Mean Streets.
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