A Steak and a Smile

A smile and a steak are two images that you wouldn’t immediately associate with last night’s episode of Mad Men, entitled “The Good News.”  In fact, the “good news” is so buried within the episode that it is actually hard to discern that it is good news. Last night’s episode was one of the most difficult and perhaps darkest episodes of Mad Men that the series has ever put on air. Even today I am still turning it over in my mind to find some sort of meaning, which may be a strange thing to say about a TV show – and a slight bit disconcerting – but this is the effect of Mad Men, this is the greatness.

“The Good News” gave us a prolonged look at both the Don Draper character and the Dick Whitman character.  A lot of people who watch Mad Men are not fans of Season 2’s “California Arc,” where Don travels to California to stay with Anna Draper, the real wife of the man who’s name he stole.  Many people saw the “California Arc” as moving too far away from the heart of the show, which lies in the office, in New York, and also at the Draper household.  However, Don’s trip to California allows us to see the real Dick Whitman, whether he is a wanderer among a pack of eccentric wanderers when he meets Joy and her “family”, or when he is vulnerable, innocent and confessional when he is with Anna Draper at her home by the ocean.  In “The Mountain King,” Anna Draper tells Don that the only thing that keeps him from being happy is “the belief that he [you] are alone.”  There are intimate moments between the two that are never evident in other parts of Don’s life.  When he is with Betty he is constantly afraid of being discovered; when he is with his mistresses he is wrapped up in the romance of escape and of their youth; when he is with his children there is a glimpse into some kind of unconditional love, some openness of emotion, but that is quickly eclipsed by the lie of his identity and his role as a father to them.  With Anna Draper none of these issues arise.  As she says in “The Good News” she knows everything about Don and loves him despite of it all.  She is the closest person to him – she straddles both of his identities.

However, in “The Good News,” Don/Dick learns that this intimate relationship will soon be taken away from him.  Anna’s niece, Stephanie, tells Don that Anna has cancer and that doctors and specialists haven’t given her very long to live.  Jon Hamm does some serious acting throughout this episode as you can see wave after wave of emotion come over his face as he and Stephanie sit in his car.  This news is revealed to Don after he once again unsuccessfully tries to pick up a girl.  Here, though, we get a very open admission from Don. As he tries to convince Stephanie to sleep with him he marvels at how young and beautiful she is (echoes of Roger Sterling in “Long Weekend” from Season 1) and tells her that he and Anna never had a romantic relationship, but that “he loves her for lots of reasons and in a very different way.”  Don/Dick is capable of breaking down the different forms of romance there are in the world. He admits to his unique love with Anna, but in Stephanie he is mistaking youth with some other kind of love.  He is attracted to Stephanie’s boldness when she asks if  he is married or divorced as well as her bold statement when mocking the dating process when she says, “But nobody knows what’s wrong with themselves and everyone else can see right away.”  Once again we are presented with one of the “types” that Don is attracted to, like a Faye Miller who can make a profound statement, or a Rachel Mencken, the intellect is present.  There is also that strange element of youth that seems necessary for Don, like Ms. Farrell had or Joy. It’s something tied to that want to run away and be free that is inherent in Dick Whitman, that very Gatsbyesque element that we all have.  However, lurking around that allure is a moment like the end of The Great Gatsby, or the end of The Graduate.  That solemn understanding of what is inevitable.  Don comes to grasp this after he fights with Anna’s sister about informing Anna that she has cancer. Dick/Don tries to insert himself into the situation with the confidence and command of the Don Draper character, only he is shot down by Anna’s sister and forced to face the fact that Anna is sick and is dying and it isn’t his role to tell her the truth.  He hasn’t committed to this identity, this world enough to make that kind of statement, no matter how much he may love Anna Draper in his own unique, platonic, and unconditional way. So, he has to run away again, he has to put back the Don Draper persona.

And what we get with the Don Draper persona is nothing short of depressing and dark.  When Don gives up his idea of a vacation to Acapulco after facing the dire circumstances of Anna Draper’s illness, he returns to New York, to his once place of solace – the office – where he encounters another lonely soul in Lane Pryce.  Lane reveals that his wife has chosen her love of Britain over him and will be seeking an attorney for a divorce.  Lane has come to love America despite the fact that no one has been warm to him, as Don admits.  Lane also admits that despite his tough stance on the company’s finances, the company has done terrific business in their first year. The two share the “good news,”  silence of the office and the smooth finish of Lane’s scotch before Don decides that they should make a night of it.  They fill a flask of scotch (Don sloppily spills the expensive scotch onto the floor of the office as he fills the flask) and go to the movies to watch a Japanese monster movie. Mad Men fans have been arguing about whether it is Godzilla or some other movie, but really, who cares?  The men talk loudly during the movie and share in the kind of “Lost Weekend” mentality that all men romanticize, getting rid of any and all shackles, drinking at will and not caring for any circumstances.  The two then sit down for a steak dinner before Don decides that they should get rid of the steak and go meet two “girlfriends” downtown.  Don offers to pay and Lane stands up with the piece of steak placed firmly in front of his  crotch and shouts, “I got a big Texas belt buckle…yee haw!.”  After they meet the women (Don’s go to prostitute and her friend), Don and Lane go back to Don’s apartment with the prostitutes.  As Lane’s girl takes him into the bedroom, it is a subtle piece of acting to see Lane take off his glasses, pull himself up in stature and then lean in to kiss the prostitue. It is a release for a man who loves to work and has in a sense given up his family for his job and for his love for America.  The next morning, Lane wakes up to find Don brewing coffee.  Lane thanks Don for the night out and leaves after drinking a glass of water.  There is a subtle recognition between the two, something close to the shame one feels waking up to a hookup the day after, which is also close to the alienation one feels after revelling with a friend or person they do not know incredibly well and letting them crash at their apartment only to wake and make pleasantries and give a mild slap on the back of good will. Those emotions are stirring in the scene but Hamm and Jared Harris give us more, they give us an appreciation between the two men, that they can share their circumstances and their loneliness, can share the thrill of their new company’s modest success and the toll that it has taken on their lives.

The third leg of this episode’s base was provided by Joan.  Who butted heads with Lane at the office but then reconciled.  They are both consummate professionals whose respect held out by a quiet acknowledgement of troubles at home. Lane’s flower mix-up reminded Joan of her own insecurities towards her husband, who treats her like a child as he fixes her cut finger.  Joan’s husband who is unable to get her pregnant after she has already had two abortions. Joan’s husband who may be going to Vietnam, but who doesn’t know if he will and he throws a fit about a weekend in the Poconos.  Joan is trying to organize her life, trying to have a baby and trying to treat her personal life with the same composed manner she carries in her professional life.  Yet, at home she faces a man who is broken, whose dreams are gone and who had to resort to entering the army as a means to support her. As Greg says about Joan’s wound: “I can’t fix everything, but I can fix this.”  Joan manages to get rid of her tears as she acknowledges and admits, perhaps in a very small way, that her husband is the failure that the viewers have always known him to be.

As the show comes to an end and all the partners (and Pete Cambell) of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce are gathered around the conference table, it is Joan who sits at the head.  Light falls into the office at a slant and Joan asks, “Alright, gentleman, shall we begin 1965?”  The viewer then sees Don, looking extremely uncertain and somewhat displeased at hearing the year being said.  The face is almost identical to the hopeless look on Don’s face as he lies facedown on his bed after stripping the sheets once Lane leaves his apartment.  Slowly but surely the vestiges of the Dick Whitman persona are fading away and now he is left with the identity he created, the identity that led to his success.  But that identity is imbalanced, it is out of order and perhaps the answer to straightening it out lies in the message that Faye Miller delivered in “Christmas Comes But Once A Year,” which is the difference between “what I want and what people expect of me.”  Everyone has to reconcile these items, but no one moreso than Don Draper in January 1965.

Christmas in July (or August)

“Mad Men, you've done it again.”

That’s all I could utter after last night’s episode (Season 4, Episode 2 “Christmas Comes But Once A Year”) of Mad Men.  To be fair, I usually say that after every episode because I am an unabashed lover of the show.  However, last night’s episode really deserved that comment.  The episode had the perfect blend of all the elements of Mad Men that we love: darkness, style, office dynamics, surrealism, witty banter and quips, and multiple levels of themes that intertwine each character and relationship on the show.  We got equal doses of Roger Sterling wit, Don Draper sadness and philosophy, Joan flexing her professional muscles, Peggy’s inner conflict, the strangeness of Glen, the curiosity of Sally Draper and more darkness of Don Draper.

In the first episode of this season, we saw Don Draper had fallen from the excitement, confidence and thrill of starting his own agency.  We saw his alienation from his family, his unsure position as the figurehead of the company and as a presence within his own industry.  We saw him hire a prostitute to slap him.  Although that first episode seemed to have ended on a high note, here we are back on a low note. Instead of hiring a prostitue, in this episde Don makes an innocent girl, his secretary Allison, feel like a prostitute.  While Don is engaging in this dynamic, Sterling is made into a prostitute by Lee Garner Jr. at the Christmas party when he has to dress up like Santa and have the staff sit on his lap.  And finally, Peggy prostitues herself out to her lame duck boyfriend.  She gives up the virginity she pretends to have, which as John Lennon once inferred is always present in the beginning of a new relationship, there is always a sense of virginity.  Peggy gave that sense up, that virtue she seemed to be holding onto out of an uncertainty of her boyfriend’s strength or viability, she gave up a position of strength (withholding sex) because she was afraid of being alone.  And we see her at the end of the episode, after having sex with her boyfriend who seems confident and happy in the ignorant thought that he took her virginity, looking incredibly disappointed and disillusioned.  She has been used, except she has used herself for a cheap thrill, for the easy answer of being with someone, being with anyone.  Obviously this episode predates the Stephen Stills song, “Love the One You’re With,” but that is where that logic takes you – to the look on Peggy Olsen’s face at the end of “Christmas Comes But Once A Year.”

On a strange and different note, Sally Draper is used in a way in this epsiode.  The way that Glen befriends her as a means of testing to see if the Draper/Francis family is home in order to trash the house is a strange way of using her as a person. Now, there is definitely an element to Glen that can be seen as likable. He related to the pain that Sally is going through and he has been inserted into the show at various points (Season 1 and Season 2) as a sory of barometer and measuring stick for Betty Draper and her core personality and values. And at this point, Glen sees Betty Draper for the child she is and her inability to recognize that about herself.  She calls his mother in Season 2 when he runs away from home and thus he sees her as betraying him and betraying herself.  And now he resents her.  He is acting as an older guide to Sally and perhaps he even does have a crush on her.  Yet, the way he acted and used his phone calls to her as the way of knowing when to break into the house, suggests something more sinister.  I don’t mean to talk about these child characters in light of some of the terms above, but it just shows the different levels and shades of a theme that this show incorporates within its various storylines.

Of course, the main act of prostitution comes between Don and his secretary Allison. Over the last season and a half, we have seen Allison become a more prominent character. She first appeared in the show when Cosgrove chased her around the office in “Nixon vs. Kennedy” in Season 1 and tried to guess what color her underwear was (it was blue).  She is a reliable secretary for Don and towards the end of the last season you got a real sense of a certain professional chemistry between them that may have bordered on an actual attraction. It seemed to come more from her character as the actress gives off a terrific beam of a smile, a smile that showed a woman eager to please.  The more they interacted, the more Don seemed to reciprocate, whether from a professional appreciation or because he couldn’t resist the cute, natural looking girl with long brown hair that sat at his desk (sort of how he described how he imagined Ms. Farrell as a young girl).  However, you never thought that Don would sleep with her because it seemed like his policy to never do so.  But this is not the same Don Draper.  This Don Draper drinks too much, he doesn’t eat.  He is trying to throw himself into something but nothing is sticking. The employees are talking behind his back not in a reverential or fearful way, but in the tone of pity.  In this episode, Don does not sleep with his neighbor Phoebe who was clearly interested in him.  He couldn’t because he was too drunk and too weak from working and not eating.  He had no focus.  All he could do was try to pull her in once she tried to take care of him.  But all he did was remind Phoebe of her father who she told him was a drunk.  I read a theory that Don has been attracted to woman who are motherly and intelligent. The intelligent side would hold true for Ms. Farrell, Rachel Mencken, Bobbi Barrett (businesswise), and Midge.  However, only Ms. Farrell and Rachel Mencken (slightly) have been at all motherly.  Obviously this is the first time this Phoebe character  has been on the show so it is hard to tell, but she may fit that role. 

We were also introduced to Faye Miller who works in marketing and is trying to teach SCDP about psychology in advertising.  She seems to be that professional and intelligent foil when she confronts Don in his office for walking out on his presentation. Again, Don tries to finesse her into sleeping with him or at least going out with him, but he is not able to.  Instead he gets to hear a bit of the philosophy of Mad Men spoken to him through the character of Faye Miller when she says, "In a nutshell, it all comes down to what I want versus what's expected of me."  Don is slightly surprised at how poignant this statement is and you can see the thought to sleeping with her leave his face.  He resigns that this is a different type of woman.  Someone who may understand what it is all about.

With two options denied, Don finds himself, tired, drunk and locked out of his apartment.  He has to rely on Allison to bring him his keys.  And when she comes to deliver the keys, to let him in and “tuck him in” as Phoebe had  done a night or so before, he makes a move on her.  You can see Allison’s surprise and then the desire suddenly appear.  I read a good analysis of this scene where Allison always wanted this to happen, but her initial denial is because not only did some part of her think it would end badly, but the way it was happening was not the way she imagined it would happen.  But she gives in to what she wants and you can see the pleased and surprised look on her face afterward, while Don knows that he made a mistake.  And the next day he has to face the conflict of what he wants, which would be to have closed the office door and told Allison that he was sorry for what had happened, that it was wrong and he shouldn’t have done it. Instead, he does what is expected of him, he acts like it never happened, speaks in code (“I have taken advantage of your kindess one too many times”) and then gives her the bonus money.  The range of emotions on Allison’s face is remarkable and it is once of the pantheon scenes in all of Mad Men thus far.  The shame and guilt on Don’s face and first the beaming happiness on Allison’s face, then the warmth, the care, the concern, then confusion, then resignation and hurt.  While many think she was typing her resignation letter at the end, I think that she was doing what was expected of her – working – and giving up on perhaps what she actually wanted – Don in some capacity.  She will be around on this show, especially this season where Don is not able to escape his actions and the darkness of the world that he has created.

And I’ve already used up this much space without mentioning the return of Freddy Rumsen and the conflicts he and Peggy are going to encounter.  Not to mention how Pete is going to have an impact on this season with Peggy, with Freddy and otherwise.  Or, how SCDP are going to have to get rid of Lucky Strike or take care of Lee Garner Jr. in some way in order to move forward as a company.  Things are hitting on all cylinders already after only two episodes.  Some characters have not gotten their moment to shine yet, but Mad Men always delivers.

I do not know if Don will sink deeper into this dark path or if the next episode will unveil a path to some kind of redemption or slightly higher ground, but I like where we are going so far.  For Mad Men, this is as action packed as you can get – we are at a very high level of basketball here.