Huzzah! It's 'Mad Men' Week!

*Warning: Mild spoilers about Mad Men season 4 ahead*



I haven’t had this much anticipation about a TV show since I sat down to watch the series finale of Lost – which, I still can’t discuss rationally because I remain pretty steamed about it. Mad Men commences its fourth season on Sunday at 10 and there’s all manner of media attention being paid to this critical darling of a drama with the small but influential viewership.

The New York Times had a big Mad Men spread in the Arts section yesterday in which we learned a few tidbits about the new season, like when it takes place and where our favorite characters are in their lives: “. . . [I]t’s a year later, and the executives of Sterling Cooper Draper [Pryce] go on cattle calls to woo clients. Contracts melt away. The business is precarious and copywriters stoop to publicity stunts to gin up business.”

Most interesting to me was this tidbit about Betty’s new, married life with Henry Francis, “Henry, who has grown children from a previous marriage, promises Betty a better life – though this one comes with a scornful mother-in-law.”

Mother-in-law? Betty didn’t have to deal with any in-laws when she was married to Don. Given that her own parents are deceased, this’ll be fascinating to watch, as will this shocking detail about Don, who, the New York Times says, “finds himself along in a dark Greenwich Village apartment, shining his own shoes and going out on blind dates.”

The blindingly handsome Don needs blind dates? Wow. Apparently Miss Farrell wasn’t interested in picking up where they left off.



Meanwhile Salon ran a provocative piece which took a meta-look at the show’s place at this particular point in time and why it resonates so powerfully with some viewers. Citing the recession and an “American dream” that currently seems “less attainable than ever,” Heather Havrilesky wrote that given the current economic crisis:

“Somehow Mad Men captures this ultra-mediated, postmodern moment, underscoring the disconnect between the American dream and reality by distilling our deep-seated frustrations as a nation into painfully palpable vignettes. Even as the former denizens of Sterling Cooper unearth a groundswell of discontent beneath the skin-deep promises of adulthood, they keep struggling to concoct chirpy advertising messages that provide a creepily fantastical backdrop to this modern tragedy. Don (Jon Hamm) sighs deeply and unlocks the door to his lonely apartment, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) whiles away her waking hours trading casual quips with co-workers, but happiness is still just a shiny kitchen floor or a sexy bikini or a cigarette away.

As the American dream is packaged for mass consumption, these isolated characters find themselves unnerved by its costs.”

What are your big hopes, storyline-wise, for season four?

'Mad Men' Monday: The Gypsy and the Hobo

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*


I don’t entirely trust Don Draper and how he reacted to being caught in his web of lies as his carefully crafted image was smashed to smithereens by his wife. When I watched “The Gypsy and the Hobo,” after a tough-as-nails Betty called Don on the carpet and refused to back down in the face of his attempts to bully her, I kept wondering if Don and Betty were trying to play one another and whether an actual emotional connection was being formed between them as a realignment and a leveling of marital power was unfolding in front of my eyes.

Why so cynical? Several reasons, chief among them was that Betty had no reason to raise the issue of Don’s serial deceptions with an attorney unless she was seriously considering divorce, particularly in the wake of Don asserting financial control over her, refusing to give her more money when she knew for a fact that stacks of cash were sitting in his desk. Betty doesn’t usually respond well to feeling like someone’s made a fool of her. At the end of season one, she told her therapist that she knew Don was cheating on her, but didn’t directly confront Don. The reason she tossed Don out of the house in season two was because Jimmy Barrett told her Don and Bobbie Barrett were sleeping together and Betty felt publicly humiliated, so much so that she vomited shortly after Jimmy told her. When Don tried to make her feel as though she was an idiot and fabricating a Don-Bobbie affair in her head, she booted him.

When Betty learned from the Hofstadt family attorney that if she sought a divorce she’d get nothing, could lose the kids and everything else to Don unless she could prove his infidelity, I got the distinct impression that Betty started mulling how she could accumulate evidence to hold over his head and use at her convenience. Now she’s confirmed that Don broke the law, stole someone’s identity, went to California during his marriage to Betty to stay with his ex-wife Anna, plus Betty knows about Bobbie and has a witness in Jimmy Barrett, who hates Don.


When Don was cornered and ‘fessed up about the tragic truth of his family background, Betty tentatively put her arm on his shoulders to indicate that she isn’t without compassion. But regardless of Don’s tears, I think Betty’s going to continue to compile a dossier of information about his misbehavior, just in case. Betty’s so miserable, so betrayed, so tired of Don’s lies that I could definitely see her trying to get Don’s money and attempt to keep her parents’ home for herself so she could start over, maybe with Henry Francis, someone who’d trust her with his heart and wouldn't erect walls of deception between them.

My husband, however, argued that Betty’s decision to accompany Don and the kids trick-or-treating is an indication that she’s going to find a way to make peace with all of this, now that the power dynamic between Don and Betty has now been leveled. Don has to take Betty seriously because she has information that could destroy him. I’m just not as certain of Betty’s desire to remain married to Don as my husband is. In season two, for example, I don’t think Betty would’ve let Don back in the house had she not been pregnant. If she learns about Suzanne Farrell, I think it’s curtains for the Drapers.

As for Don, when he was caught with his box of deceit, I kept wondering if he was simply executing a hastily-made, desperate pitch to try to convince Betty of his sincerity amid his tears and throw himself at her mercy. Think about the way in which he revealed his personal backstory and his emotions to Betty as compared to how he came clean with Rachel Menken in season one. The post-coital revelations to Rachel were genuine, from the heart. His emotions weren’t manufactured and had no ulterior motive other than in forging an emotional connection. He’s held Betty at arm’s length and hasn’t been honest with her because he didn’t have enough faith in her love to tell her the truth, whereas he trusted Rachel. With Betty, he had to be compelled to tell the truth, once she had the hard, cold evidence. Don wouldn’t have come clean willingly because he’s never really let Betty inside, as he admitted to Anna Draper last year, yet he’s been willing to allow at least two of his mistresses, including Suzanne Farrell, closer to him than his own wife.
 
While his tears were real, as were the regrets about his brother and the shame he feels about his conception and lineage, I don’t foresee Don suddenly feeling comfortable with being himself with Betty as he has with Rachel and Suzanne. He seems like he simply wants to preserve his hollow, stolen identity, no matter what.


Another reason why I’m suspicious about Don’s sincerity is because when Suzanne asked him if he’d called to tell her he couldn’t see her anymore, his response was, “Not right now. No.” Was he telling her that they had to cool things temporarily until Betty gets less wary, or was he really breaking it off?

However I must say that Don’s dramatic dropping and releasing of his clenched fist in which he held the keys to his desk drawer and all his secrets after Betty said she knew what was inside, the tears he shed over Adam, all made Don seem like a shattered soul. (Jon Hamm was fantastic.) The next morning, though, with his suit of armor back on, it was hard to tell if this event will really fundamentally transform the Draper marriage.

What do you think? Were Don and Betty were being sincere with one another and do they really wish to make their marriage work, or do you think one or both of them is playing games? Will this change anything?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Color of Blue

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

So now she knows. Someone named “Don Draper,” whom she knows as her husband, was once married to a woman named “Anna Draper,” for whom Don has the deed for her California home. She knows that Don has a secret shoebox tucked away in a locked drawer, next to piles of cash, and contains two sets of dog tags for Donald Draper and Richard Whitman, as well as photos with a younger Don being referred to as "Dick."

Betty knows Don’s hiding from her. More than about being unfaithful and rerturning to his sneaky ways again, not coming home, being distant, just like he did when he was sleeping with Bobbie Barrett, and the other women whose names Betty doesn’t know. The question is: What’s she gonna do about it?

Is Betty going to call him on his box of secrets and his lies, or does she hold all of this in reserve, as a weapon to be wielded at just the right moment? If Don had come home the day she found the box when she waited up, it seemed as though she was going to blast him with both barrels, as I, for one, was desperately hoping. But, when he didn’t come home, she put her trump card away. Why, I wondered.

If Betty was smart, she’d do her research, look into Anna Draper, the California deed, etc. to learn the truth. Then she’d have some power over Don, something he clearly has over her, though, I’m hoping, that that’s about to change. Think about how much power Mona Sterling had when Roger left her for Jane and everybody knew it? The specter of the Sterling divorce and Mona taking Roger to the cleaners is what prompted the sale of Sterling Cooper, after all.

Another observation:

“Nobody feels as good about what they do as you do,” Don said to Suzanne Farrell as they were lying in bed and she was talking about something funny that happened with an 8-year-old student in her class.
This got me wondering, is Don only attracted to women who have passion in their lives, people who love what they do? Midge had her art and her bohemian life outside of Don, plus other lovers. Rachel had her department store and her money. Bobbie had her work in the entertainment industry managing her famous comedian husband. Suzanne has her idealism and her teaching (although I suspect the moment she becomes needy -- like she did on the train -- Don will find that unattractive).

Betty hates her life and has no interests. She’s bored and unenthusiastic about everything, her passion extinguished. Does this repel Don? Think about their trip to Rome. Betty was thrilled to be there. She used her Italian and her cosmopolitan ways. She flirted. She felt sexy. She was desired. And this made Don want her. But the moment they got home, he realized she was “stuck” in what she saw as boring suburban hell, she rebuffed Don’s sexual advances and was distinctly unenthusiastic about his gift of a charm from Italy, by telling him she hated their home, their friends and their life. Soon thereafter, Don was running into Miss Farrell’s arms.

I’m not blaming Betty for Don’s infidelity, just trying to understand it. Where Betty clearly longs to be desired, doted upon and pursued (she told Sally that every kiss after the first one is a pale imitation), Don wants a happy, confident woman. They seem to be at a crossroads. Plus they're a bad match, one that I now believe cannot survive in the long term, not happily anyway, not without one of them – Betty – feeling miserable for the rest of her life.

What did you think of “The Color of Blue?” Think Betty will call Don on his lies? Use it to her advantage?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' Tuesday: Wee Small Hours

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


“I want what I want when I want, when I want it. You don’t care what it does to the rest of us.” -- Betty Draper, about her baby waking up in the middle of the night crying in hunger, but it wasn't really about the baby.

"I want you. I don't care. Doesn't that mean anything to someone like you?" -- Don Draper, to a young woman he's about to bed after she warns that they could get caught.


I don’t understand Betty and Don Draper. No matter how hard I try.

I can understand Betty’s distaste for the dullness of suburban life, her intellectual boredom, her jealousy that Don gets to work in the city, mix it up creatively, dine in fine restaurants with “clients” and live an exciting life outside of the home. I can also understand that Don doesn’t seem to think he deserves a beautiful wife and an idyllic family who live in a beautiful home in the ‘burbs because of his background, and that thing with the stolen identity. A multi-millionaire who’d appeared on the cover of Time Magazine told Don that he was "indecently" lucky, so why didn’t he feel that way? And almost all the women on the show (except for Peggy Olson) seem to be trying to get what Betty has but she doesn’t seem to want it either.

However when it comes to Don and Betty’s romantic lives, I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that I don’t completely get them and am not sure I ever will. Don and Betty just shared a wonderfully sexy jaunt to Rome, proving that they’re still hot for one another, but the moment they entered their suburban home all of that just evaporated, like their home and their kids serve as one big, cold shower dampening their affections for one another. So they turn outward instead of inward in an attempt to satiate their deep unhappiness, instead of working together.

Betty, who seems like she’s just waiting for the feminist revolution to start, wants to feel desired and senses that Don’s distracted (or doesn’t like being Don’s housewife, a possession) and looks elsewhere for affection. In Mad Men’s second season, Betty looked to the young, handsome equestrian to dote on her, to desire her, but the moment he tried to forge a real romantic connection and kiss her, she cut him off and directed his affections toward her married friend. At the end of that season, before allowing her unfaithful husband to return to the home, Betty evened the infidelity score with a fling with a stranger in a bar. This season, it’s been Henry Francis, the powerful aide to the governor who has made it plain he wants a relationship with her, which she seems to be seeking (by writing him letters, going to his office to chuck a heavy box at him) and then rebuffs Henry’s attempt.


“I don’t know what you want,” Henry said to her. What does Betty want? Does Betty even know? Is it all just about the satisfaction of the chase and when the chase is over any potential relationship is kaput, like when Betty told Sally that every kiss beyond the first is but a mere shadow by comparison?

Speaking of loving the chase, there’s her husband Don, who has this beautiful Grace Kelly wife and, after she threw him out last year, seemed to be on the good husband/good daddy road to redemption. Don has not acted on his sexual impulses since the near-fling with the flight attendant in the season premiere (though he did run away like an angry teen when Betty asked him why he didn’t sign the Sterling Cooper contract). Then he fell off the faithful husband bandwagon during this “Wee Small Hours” episode where he consummated his simmering desire to have the idealistic, young elementary school teacher whom he asked whether she’s “dumb or pure.”


What’s curious is his selection of conquests. In season one, with Don’s affair with Bohemian artist Midge there was little chance of Don getting caught or Midge running into Betty or anyone Don knew. But as his time has gone on, Don has selected women who are more likely to meet and have run-ins with Betty. Bobbie Barrett was a client’s wife and a person with whom Betty would run into at events. Miss Farrell, Sally’s former teacher who said she sees Betty at the market and lives close by, is even one degree closer. Is he trying to get caught and be punished like the bad boy he thinks he is, deep down inside?

Other storylines:

-- Poor Sal. He was acting in all manner of social correctness with the drunk and aggressive Lee Garner Jr. If Lucky Strikes Lee had made a move on Don which Don rebuffed, do you think Don would’ve been fired as easily as they disposed of Sal? As I watched Sal photocopy his work, I wondered/hoped he and the other “misfits,” Sal and Peggy, would jump ship to join Duck.

-- By golly, is Connie Hilton a nut? The moon stuff, the telling Don he’s like a son and an “angel” and then reprimanding Don for not actually pitching a Hilton on the moon, that whole exchange was baffling. “You did not give me what I wanted. I’m deeply disappointed Don,” Connie said after Don presented a smart Hilton campaign. “. . . [W]hat do you want from me love? . . . When I say I want the moon, I expect the moon.” (Betty could just as easily have said those words to him.) All the moon talk made me think of It’s a Wonderful Life’s George Bailey promising to give Mary Hatch the moon. Anyone else get the feeling that this odd relationship between Connie and Don will end badly?

What’re your thoughts on what Don and Betty really want? On Sal’s termination from Sterling Cooper? Connie’s Hilton on the moon?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.