Saturday, August 23, 2008

Mad Men - Episode 4: Three Sundays

I have much to say about last Sunday's episode of "Mad Men" but, alas, little time to say it. I've been busy all day today and I'll be gone all day tomorrow. Suffice to say that the episode was brilliant, packed full of interesting things - I'd need all day to get in everything it brought to mind.

First, a few personal notes. Years ago we visited my Dad and he told us that a young lady of our acquaintance had gotten engaged. We asked about the guy. "Nice guy," my dad said. "A little weak." Well, we met the guy a few days later and my dad nailed him. My wife said "a little weak" was the perfect description for the guy, who was a nonentity with little to say and completely subservient to his future wife. When Roger Sterling is at dinner with his wife Mona, his daughter Margaret, and his daughter's future husband, I thought of the "little weak" statement. The future husband is "a little weak." If you've seen the episode you know what my dad meant.

Little Sally Draper's comment to Joan, "You've got big ones. My mommy has big ones too. When I grow up I'm going to have big ones," gave my wife and I a big kick. When my niece - whom I love, love, love, love, love, love, love - was about four years old she encountered my wife in a state of undress. After gazing at her for a moment she said, "You've got big ones. I've got little ones." We've told that story for years and Sally's comment made us laugh out loud because of its association with our niece.

Also, the scene of the priest with Peggy in the car in front of the pizza parlor reminded me of a scene that was cut from The Godfather II, the scene where they kill Fabrizio, who'd been Michael's bodyguard in Italy and was responsible for Appolonia's death. When they finally discover his whereabouts years later he's running a pizza parlor in Buffalo. The next scene has Fabrizio locking up the store with a pizza box in hand, presumably bringing it home to his family for dinner. He gets in the car, starts it, and the bomb goes off. The scene was cut from the original release but can be seen in uncut versions of the movie. It probably wasn't deliberate on the part of the producers but the Father Gill and Peggy scene sure reminded me of that.

I also note a recurring theme this year is that of parenting styles. When Sally steals a drink during her Sunday at the office and falls asleep, presumably drunk, no one says a word. Don simply picks her up and brings her home - no big deal. Nowadays they'd be rushing her to the hospital, and perhaps later taking her to a psychiatrist in order to get to the bottom of her behavior. Kids were not fretted over back then the way they are today. "Full-court press" parenting, to steal a phrase from Joseph Epstein, was still way off in the future, and any parent who acted then like most do now would have been thought to be smothering. So this is another thing the show gets right.

Roger Sterling loves the chase, whether its chasing new business like the American Airlines account, or a prostitute like Vicki, and played by the astonishingly beautiful Marguerite Moreau, who can blame him? "I want everything I want," he tells her, in one of my favorite lines of the show, and it sums Roger up perfectly. Will Vicki mean trouble for Roger? He's had plenty of women before but he seems completely smitten with Vicki. If he's going to fall, it would be entirely believable if it were for a girl like her.

I've read elsewhere in a few places that Peggy's interest in Father Gill was not sexual. I disagree. I think it was. Peggy's sister Anita might have sabotaged her budding relationship with the priest by telling him about her child during confession, but she was right about Peggy - she does what she wants without regard to what others think. The look on Peggy's face when Father Gill drops the Easter egg in her hand and says, "For the little one" was priceless. It was Father Gill's way of telling her she needs to take responsibility for her boy. But until this moment I thought Peggy was sexually interested in the priest. "Sexual predator" was my thought while watching the episode for the first time. I thought perhaps that was the direction they were taking the character. (I thought she was becoming a younger version of Bobbie Barrett, who again seduces Don Draper, this time in his office, and only a few short weeks after his rough treatment of her.) Now, with the priest clearly uninterested but also his subtle suggestion to her, perhaps their will be some internal struggle within Peggy between her son and her selfishness.

Speaking of internal struggles, we saw more clearly than ever the internal struggle between Don Draper and Dick Whitman. Betty Draper implores Don to discipline their son Bobby, whom Betty seems to dislike intensely. Don is reluctant and in the end we - and Betty - find out why. "My father used to beat the hell out of me. All it did was make me fantasize about the day I could murder him." But Don is not without violence. We saw it last week with his near assault of Bobbie Barrett, and we saw it again this week when he pushed Betty after she has pushed him. He pushes her hard. I immediately thought that January Jones, the actress who plays Betty, might not have had to act real hard to show her anger - he really nails her. Here we see Dick Whitman come out like we never have before. We see the man who's father used to beat the hell out of him, the man Don Draper is trying to escape.

I loved the Sunday scene in the Draper living room. Betty is reading F. Scott Fitzgerald, probably "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", the story Arthur asked Betty if she had read last week at the stables. She hadn't but now she's reading it. So Arthur has had an influence. I'd mentioned in my "Mad Men" post before this season started how Don Draper reminded my of Jay Gatsby and the old American story of remaking yourself into who you want to be, regardless of the circumstances of your birth. The Fitzgerald influence is all over "Mad Men" - glitz, glamour, the promise of being young in America with the world on a string, the betrayal felt if those promises don't work out, "the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us."

I - and everyone else apparently, including the people who keep up the official Mad Men page - thought it was Bing Crosby singing Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart's "Blue Room" but now I'm hearing it was Perry Como. Well, Perry never sounded better - a beautiful song and the perfect choice for the scene.

I don't have time to get into the American Airlines account fiasco, except to note Don once again is at odds with Duck. Duck wants to put all three marketing ideas on the table when they meet with the AA execs, while Don wants a single one - and of course he comes up with the perfect one for an airline that's just had a plane end up in Jamaica Bay. "That crash happened to someone else. We've got nothing to apologize for. American Airlines is about the future. Let's pretend we know what 1963 looks like." Of course it's all for naught - Duck's contact at AA is fired the day of the presentation, killing Sterling-Cooper's shot at the account. "We hired him in to bring in new business, not lose old business" comments Don. I like it that the show makes Duck a very nice guy. Clearly we root for Don in these matters - he's the heart and show of the show - but they don't set Duck up as an unlikeable villain, making it easy for us. His gesture to the secretary, and his overall behaviour throughout this season, is that of a decent guy. He just has a different way of doing business than Don. But I think it will end badly for Duck.

No comments: