'Mad Men's' Fools in Love, Or Just Plain Fools?

In episode 11 of the third season of Mad Men -- entitled, “The Gypsy and the Hobo” -- Betty confronted Don about that secret box that he kept in his locked drawer in his office. She demanded to know who was this man who called himself her husband, really? Why were there all these photos inside of his mystery box which included ones picturing Don, only they had a different name on the back of them? Who was Don’s first wife? Why did he buy her a house? Why were there multiple sets of dog tags inside? Why had he kept all this -- his secret identity, his lies about his family – from her after being married to her for more than a decade?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Betty asked. “Why couldn’t you tell me any of this?”

“When?” Don pushed back defensively. “The day we met? On our first date? On our wedding night? Why did you need to know?”

When Betty said she didn’t really feel like she knew him even after all that time together, she said, “You lied to me every day. I can’t trust you. I don’t know who you are.”

“Yes,” he said in a small voice, “you do.”

When Betty finally decided to end her marriage, in the wake of the JFK assassination at the end of episode 12, “The Grown-Ups,” she did so on the grounds that Don had started their marriage atop of a stack of lies, therefore rendering its foundation unstable from the beginning. “I don’t know where to begin . . . I want to scream at you for ruining all of this, but then you tried to fix it and there’s no point.”

At what point along the way will something like this conversation happen with Don’s wife-to-be Megan? Don certainly had an opening to tell her about his secrets when he tepidly told her, “I’ve done a lot of things,” and adding that Megan doesn’t really know him. To which she replied, “I know who you are now.”

Don may see Megan as his own, personal “fresh start” after a really crappy year which he spent punishing himself (including paying a prostitute to literally abuse him) for his failed marriage, but she’s not a fresh start, she can't be, not with Dick Whitman out there, lurking like a wet blanket. Eventually she’ll find out about it and he’ll have to endure this same conversation all over again about why he never told Megan that his real name isn’t Don Draper. Why he didn’t tell her when they met, or on their first date, etc.? Faye knew all about Don's stolen identity and was willing to stay with him anyway, but he made fast work in dumping her. Stupid man.

Does Don think the trick of telling his wife the truth again will actually work the second time around? Shouldn't she know about these vital pieces of information before marrying him? From this perspective, he’s not moving forward, he’s moving in circles, repeating his mistakes, only with a younger, improved model, one who’s good with children and doesn’t tend to explode in anger. Oh, and this new one speaks French, whereas the Bryn Mawr educated Betty spoke Italian.

Image credit: AMC

Don’s crazy marriage proposal to Megan also reminded me of Roger’s similarly impetuous move in season two which also occurred in the eleventh episode, “The Jet Set.” Roger had recently told Mona he was leaving her after three decades of matrimony to marry his young secretary Jane. After a romantic interlude in a hotel room, Jane was wrapped up in stark white sheets, her dark, wavy hair loosely hanging around her shoulders as she read aloud poetry she’d just written. (By contrast, Megan "Maria von Trapp" got Sally and Bobby to serenade Don in French in a hotel room.) Roger, who’d just emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a bright white bathrobe, sat down next to Jane and caressed her face and hair.

“Oh God, you’re getting to me,” Roger said. When Jane said she was afraid he was going to send her packing he said he’d never do that because, “I love you Jane.”

While she thought about that, he pressed forward, “I’m not being impulsive because I’ve been thinking about this all the time. I want you to be my wife.”

“What?” she asked, shocked.

“Marry me,” Roger said.

“What, Roger are you serious?” (Maybe she questioned his sincerity because he didn’t present an engagement ring like Don did to Megan.)

“Will you do that for me?” When Jane nodded yes, Roger donned the same kind of stupid grin on his face that Don wore when he sat down on the edge of the bed and asked Megan, who was wearing a nightgown, to marry him.

In the very next season two episode, “The Mountain King,” we saw that same kind of smile again, in flashbacks, when Don was confiding in Anna on Christmas Eve that he’d met someone, Betty. “I met a girl,” his face positively beaming in a boyish, naive way that you didn't see in the present day Don. “She’s so beautiful and happy. She’s a model and she’s from a good family and she’s educated . . . I just like the way she laughs and the way she looks at me. I want to ask her to marry me.”

Yes, that was Don talking about Betty. As laughing, as happy, as giving him adoring looks which he loved. And yet somehow, all of that went away and she blamed Don's cheating and lying for it.
“This is a chance at a whole new life,” Anna told him at the time. And that's what Don's counting on now, and what Roger was counting on when he proposed to his secretary in season two, yet in season four he impregnated the office manager in an alley and Faye said Don's fiance should know that he only likes the "new" parts of a relationship.

Roger and Don: Fools in love or just plain fools?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' -- Blowing Smoke

Image credit: AMC

*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Addiction. Addiction to tobacco. Addiction to heroin. Addiction to lies, to false facades, to impulsive actions, to getting involved with the wrong people. Mad Men was awash in bad-for-you addiction in its second-to-last season four episode and not just Don “I’m falling off the wagon” Draper.

First of all, seeing Midge return was a surprise and kind of refreshing, until of course we saw the sorry state into which her life has fallen, courtesy of her addiction to heroin as she and her husband offered to prostitute herself for the sake of more money for the next score.

While he himself had hired prostitutes in the last year to feed his addiction to his self-loathing, Don surveyed the wreckage that is Midge’s life and was stunned. It was impossible not to think of his life. During the last episode he slept with his secretary, jeopardizing his budding, healthy relationship with Faye. He’s started drinking again and his company’s on the brink.

But Don attempted to redeem himself for some of his bad behavior, paid Pete’s portion of the mandated partner contributions in order to keep the company afloat, a nod to Pete’s discretion when it came to the Dick Whitman matter.

Don also sought to cleanse himself of his company’s “addiction” to Lucky Strike -- the loss of which could wind up destroying Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce -- by unilaterally composing and then purchasing a full-page ad in the New York Times telling the world, “Why I’m Quitting Tobacco” and vowed that the agency wouldn’t accept tobacco companies as clients any longer. (Don was shown swimming as you heard his voice-over reading his open letter. Water and cleansing . . . which led to a scene where Don come face to face with Megan.)

Don experienced a Jerry Maguire moment of sorts, although Don’s open letter wasn’t a heartfelt opus, ‘twas but a mere marketing ploy to save his sinking agency. (Loved Peggy’s wry smile when she called Don out on the fact that this was a stunt as much as Peggy’s staged mall over the ham in the market was.)



Bert’s response to Don’s stunningly narcissist act – “We’ve created a monster” – was an equally stunning one, quitting. Certainly Bert isn’t really gone, he can’t be, can he?

Maybe he really can be, given what Robert Morse, who plays Bert Cooper, told AMC’s Mad Men blogger that:

"You never know with Matt [Weiner] what is going to happen, and you never know what the future will bring, whether I'll be going to the unemployment line looking for another job or whether I'll be coming back or anything. So all I do is pick up my shoes and say good-bye to everybody and I'm out of the office. What happens next year I don't know. I hope I get a phone call. I think it's the best show in the world. . . Maybe we'll have to get a thing going: bring Robert Morse back.”

Meanwhile, back in the awkward, uncomfortable and emotionally withholding Francis home, Sally had been sneaking around and hanging out with creepy Glen – the one who ransacked the house for Sally earlier in the season -- though it should be noted that Sally took a pass on his offer of cigarettes, unlike in season two when Sally stole Betty’s cigarettes and, when Betty found her smoking, shoved her in a closet. Sally’s truly the product of the duplicitous Betty and Don, telling her therapist that Betty doesn’t really care how Sally feels because Betty just wants compliance.

About Betty . . . the fact that once she realized Sally was hanging out with Glen – a haunted kind of boy who’d previously show an interest in Betty in season two, when Betty dressed him in one of Don's T-shirts and watched cartoons with him – was what prompted Betty to announce that they’d be moving out of the house, when her own husband’s pleas fell on deaf ears, is disturbing. On so many levels.

All of this, plus laying off Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce employees, made me wonder: How will this play in the season finale next week, called, “Tomorrowland?” The AMC Mad Men web site only says this of the season finale: “Opportunity arises for Don and Peggy.”

If you had the ear of the Mad Men writers, what would you hope to see in the season four finale?

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'Mad Men' -- Hands and Knees

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Weaknesses. And lies. Weaknesses compounded by lies. This “Hands and Knees” episode had all of this in spades.

Chief among them were Don’s lies, which became relevant again as Don feared that the feds would find him and send him to prison because he’s not who he says he is. Uncharacteristically, this prompted Don to have a panic attack in front of Faye, which, all and all, was acutally good for him because it prompted him to be honest to her about the fact that he’s living under an assumed name. (Don’s having a really, REALLY crappy year, don't you think?)

Related to Don’s lies is the fact that slimy Pete Campbell knows about them. So when the feds started sniffing around in order to provide security clearance for people at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to work on the North American Aviation account, Don, fearing his Dick Whitman past would catch up with him, applied enormous pressure on Pete to lie on his behalf about “losing the account,” or else Don said Pete would have to try to run the company without him.

As Pete sat up late at night mourning the fact that he was going to have to “lose” the $4+ million client he’d landed after years of wooing and he complained about the burden the “honest people” have to shoulder for their ethically challenged brethren, Pete ironically took his pregnant wife Trudy in his arms, with her completely unaware of the fact that he had a gigantic lie he was hiding, that he had a baby with another woman years ago. The following day, Pete withstood a verbal flogging from Roger for "losing" North American Aviation because of his own inattention.

Don’s lies have even longer legs as they also affect Betty even though she’s now married to Henry. She protected Don by not telling the feds who showed up from the Defense Department what she knew about who her ex-husband is. The fact that Betty knows about Don’s identity fraud and hasn’t shared it with Henry, who has lofty political ambitions of his own, could cause a problem for her down the road.

Joan’s weakness, her Achilles heel, is Roger. She and he cheated on their spouses together. Joan got pregnant from their post-mugging incident in the alley and decided to have another abortion to avoid what she called “a tragedy” because she’d been apart from Greg for too long for it to be his baby, which was highly ironic given that she’d been anxious to have a baby with Greg and now he’s been deployed to Vietnam.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

Roger’s weakness is, conversely, Joan, however his getting Joan pregnant jeopardized his marriage to Jane. (“What kind of man are you?” the doctor, who was going to hook Joan up with someone who’d give her an illegal abortion, said to Roger. “You’ve used this woman . . . A man of your age, only slightly younger than myself, that you could behave with such selfishness, such irresponsibility.”)

A corollary to Roger’s frailties is the fact that Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s huge weakness is the fact that without Lucky Strike, the company could fold, go bankrupt. Lucky Strike – the company Don once said “could put out our lights” -- is Roger’s big raison d’etre, without it, he’s just the guy who inherited his company from his dad. God, Roger might have to actually do some work in the month that he has before he has to tell his colleagues the Lucky Strike account is history.

Then there was poor Lane, poor, poor Lane. How depressing is it to see a man of his age so fearful of his stuffy, judgmental, violent, bullying father, the senior citizen who walks with a cane. Lane's father arrived at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, instead of Lane’s son, to inform Lane that he was there to take him home to London to be with his wife and family. However Lane’s now in love with Toni, who works as a costumed waitress at the Playboy Club, but didn’t come right out and tell his father about the fact that he’s dating not only a waitress, but a woman of a difference race. This brought Lane face-to-face with his weakness: That he’s still a child who’s cowed by his father, who allowed his father to strike him in the head with a cane (drawing blood) and threaten to crush his hands with his shoe while Lane was lying on the floor in pain, crying uncle, as Don did in the face of Duck's fists. The physical bullying to make Lane get his “home in order” did the trick as Lane promptly told the other SCDP partners that he was taking a leave of absence to go to London.

So, just when things were starting to look up for the folks around SCDP – Don was getting healthy and cutting back on drinking while seeing his children and having an adult relationship based on trust with Faye; Roger was married and not cheating (up until last week); Pete and Trudy were expecting a baby and Lane had helped build a solid company – now everything seems precarious. It apparently takes very little to send all of their houses of cards to come crashing down on top of them.

But I must admit, I was half expecting Faye to help Don come clean, to turn himself in so he could indeed stop running, as he said he wanted to. I feel like Matthew Weiner is hinting that Don’s going to have a big, humiliating public exposure of his big lie, or will need to, in order for him to go forward. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Don’s luck seems like it’s going to run out, soon, but after he takes Sally to see the Beatles.

Image credits: Michael Yarish AMC.