If I was worried last week that "Mad Men" had slipped a little, I need be concerned no longer - season two's second episode was brilliant, and it set us up for a season possibly more interesting than the first. There are conflicts every which way you turn, between Don and Duck, Don and Pete, Don and Betty, even, perhaps, Don and Roger, between Peggy and Pete, Peggy and Joan, Peggy and her child, Joan and Paul. Beyond the personal conflicts are those cultural conflicts that serve as the show's backdrop - the 1950s vs. the 1960s, buttoned-down Madison Avenue vs. Greenwich Village, the rock and roll generation vs. the beats and the folkies. It's all a fascinating brew.
I've mentioned quite often about how "Mad Men" shows us the prevailing attitudes of the era and Pete Campbell's reaction to his father's death in an airplane crash tells us much about how times have changed. "Mad Men" is set during a period when men did not show emotion, at least not like they do today. They were expected to be strong and stoic in the face of personal tragedy. With Pete, we get the added aspect of his upper-crust, blue-blooded background, in which emotional distance was the norm, and so his reaction - or non-reaction - to his father's death seems perfectly reasonable. It barely registers with him emotionally. He never really knew his father and this is something else I don't think this was very unusual for the time. It may not have been pervasive throughout society but there were plenty of fathers who worked and provided but who spent little time with their children and never developed the type of personal relationship with them as they do today. Pete knows he's supposed to be feeling something but he doesn't. He wants to cry but he doesn't have it in him. Still, it is a bit shocking in its ghoulishness when Pete uses his father's death in a sales pitch to an American Airlines executive within days of the crash in order to steal their account and sign American up with Sterling-Cooper. Pete, not a sympathetic character to begin with, is monstrously ambitious, and we hate him for it.
This contrasts nicely with Don Draper's resistance to Sterling-Cooper decision to drop their current airline account, the small-time Mohawk, for a shot at the American Airline account. Don's sense of loyalty and propriety towards Mohawk shows him as a man of conscience, something we probably shouldn't have expected given some of his past actions. But, as I said about last week's episode, things are changing on "Mad Men" and Don Draper's heart and soul may be target number one. Of course, he may simply think it's bad business - SC has the Mohawk account in-hand and they're ready to give it up just for the possibility of signing American. Also, what does this move tell their other client's about SC? Don asks Roger, "What kind of company do we want to be?" and Roger, perfectly in character, answers, "The kind where everyone has a summer home?" The decision is made to drop Mohawk, backed by both Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling, and the comment made by the Mohawk executive to Don as he leaves - "I'm almost embarrassed to say this. You fooled me." - cuts to the quick.
This brings up another possible source of conflict. We've now had two second season episodes and both had story lines in which Duck and Don were at odds. Roger sided with Duck on both issues. Will trouble arise between Roger and Don?
The entire second episode is built around the true event of the crash of an American Airlines Boeing 707 airliner, flight 1 to LAX, on March 1, 1962. All 95 people on board were killed. The episode begins the previous evening at a party at Paul Kinsey home which is attended by many of SC's younger employees. Paul wields a pipe and sports a beatnik beard, and introduces his black girlfriend to the assembled guests. Joan, who once dated Paul, nails him the next day: “You’re out there in your poor-little-rich-boy apartment in Newark or wherever, walking around with your pipe and your beard, falling in love with that girl just to show everyone how interesting you are.” When he walks away she calls out "Tell me which part was wrong." This tells us a lot about Paul but even more so about Joan. She's the ultimate 1950's woman, a woman who revels in being a woman, who loves the attention of men. She'll use her looks to get what she wants without ever questioning whether to do so is wrong. She's comfortable in a man's world. This new beat generation is threatening to her. She's the keeper of the keys at Sterling-Cooper and the world SC thrives in and she doesn't want it disturbed. The show even uses her physical appearance to put her forth as the 1950's girl and the 1950's culture. When Paul, in revenge (it had to have been Paul), steals her purse from her locker and posts a copy of her driver's license on the bulletin board, complete with her birth date (we find she's over 30) and weight (140) it barely phases her. First of all, she's in her thirties which means she was in her prime during the 1950's. And a woman who weighed 140 nowadays would be considered downright overweight but during the 1950s she'd qualify as the office sex object; curves were in, Marilyn Monroe was in, busts were in, and a large backside, like Joan's, was a glorious thing. Joan herself is a glorious thing and she became all the more interesting last week when we realized that, along with her other obvious assets, she is the bulwark trying to hold back the 1960's flood.
But it is 1962 and the flood will eventually overwhelm them all. The AA airliner went down on March 1, 1962. A few weeks later Columbia records would release Bob Dylan, his first record, and the folk craze of the early 1960's would intensify. Dylan had already made a name for himself in the Greenwich Village clubs the year before and his name should have been well-known by this time among the younger people at SC - it's unthinkable that Paul Kinsey, the beatnik wannabe, would be unaware of him. "Mad Men" seems to be going down the road of pitting the incoming Dylan-led youth culture against the older, Sinatra-led culture, that of scruffy, earthy, realism vs. smooth elegance and reserve.
A few more observations. Betty Draper, who has always been vaguely discontented, is now aggressively unhappy. Her behaviour during the card game was that of a woman itching for an argument and Don recognizes it immediately. Later, when they're alone, he tells her he won't fight with her and she storms out to smoke a cigarette and stew in her anger. As I said last week, trouble is definitely brewing here. As for Peggy and her child, we are presented with a woman who has no feeling whatsoever for her child except a profound discomfort when forced to spend a moment holding him. The child's discomfort with her is clear also - he cries the entire time. I mentioned Pete's monstrous ambition earlier, but Peggy, who clearly is a more sympathetic character in the eyes of the show's producers, would have been considered even more of a monster than Pete for such attitudes back in 1962. No doubt it happened though - not every woman has the motherly instincts. Peggy obviously lacks them and while it doesn't endear her to us it certainly makes her a more interesting character.
No comments:
Post a Comment