While I was disappointed by the same-old, same-old season five Mad Menpromos AMC has released, I decided to satiate my desire for new Mad Men material by hunting around on YouTube for some Mad Men-themed videos that contain some real emotion, that have real life in them, which means, of course, that they've been made by fans.
One video that I especially enjoyed was by 7Kell Productions (above) which focused on the Don and Betty Draper relationship. (While there are many Betty haters out there, I am not one of them, at least as far as seasons 1-3 are concerned.) The video chronicles the circuitous path the duo took during the show's four seasons, from moments of domestic bliss, longing and betrayal, to the complicated business of being divorced parents. (If you ask me, I think that Don would drop any woman he was with in order to reconnect with Betty, who represented an idealistic dream to him -- one he didn't quite think he deserved -- but whether he'd remain monogamous with her is an entirely different story.)
Then there's "Don Draper Undone" by EditorLosAngeles (above), which heightens the dramatic rivalry and power struggle between Don and Pete Campbell, the only one, aside from Betty, who knows the truth about Dick Whitman.
This video by MovieExtra deftly captures the rampant sexism and harassment, as well as the lame attempts at seduction by the various, moronic men of Mad Men.
On the more serious side, there's this black and white, deeply moody Don and Peggy video that depicts how desperately lonely the pair are for an authentic, emotional connection with someone and how, despite their rocky relationship, they've remained loyal to one another. Heavily reliant on scenes from the outstanding "The Suitcase" episode from season four, the video openly hopes that Don and Peggy will take it to the next level, suggesting that Peggy pines for Don. I don't think she really pines for him and believe that a romantic pairing between those two would be disastrous.
Are there any fan-made Mad Men videos out there that you really like that you really like?
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.
*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season finale ofMad Men.*
I’m very annoyed with Matthew Weiner right about now. And after the jump I'll tell you why. (I'm putting the jump in to avoid spoiling the episode for the late-watchers.)
*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode ofMad Men.*
“People tell you who they are but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.”
“When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him . . . If you listen, he’ll tell you how he got there.”
– Don Draper writing in his journal
Did you hear that? That was the sound of Don Draper bouncing off of rock bottom and starting to rebuild his shattered life. He’s finally coming up for air.
In “The Summer Man,” Don started to cut back on the drinking, began swimming (though he wheezes with smoker’s cough) and is dating as opposed to sleeping with escorts for whose sexual services he paid. He actually sent his secretary BACK to the store to RETURN liquor. When he was in a moment of stress, instead of reaching for the bottle as his instincts told him to do, he asked for coffee. He’s trying in earnest to, as he put it, “gain a modicum of control over the way I feel. I want to wake up. I don’t want to be that man.”
And Don is keeping a diary, something that requires him to have to examine his days, his thoughts, and actually survey what’s become of his life. He knows it’s not pretty. Through the beautifully lyrical voice-overs of Don reading aloud his journal entries – where we learned that Don didn’t finish high school and said if he had “everything could’ve been different” – we hear Don’s inner monologue for the first time, getting a glimpse into not just what he’s doing in his private moments, but what he’s thinking and feeling, something I think he never even really wanted to do before this because those feelings were just too scary.
As Don sat down to watch the news while eating Dinty Moore beef stew and drinking a can of Bud (NOT his preferred amber colored liquid), Don didn’t look like the sad sack who, in previous episodes this season, would come home from work, pointedly refuse to eat anything, grab a glass filled with liquor and eventually pass out on the couch. To see Don sitting at a table and eating is a sign that he cares about his physical health. While he chronicles his thoughts, he’s dealing with his mental and emotional health by working through issues like this one: “Sunday is Gene’s birthday party. I know I can’t go. I keep thinking about him. He was conceived in a moment of desperation and born into a mess.”
While Don obviously still aches to be part of his family again, I was pleased to see in this episode that though he had another date with Bethany, he realized she’s not a good match for him. (That crack from her about being in “different generations” and that she needed more from Don, and his response, “We are from different generations because I don’t remember women pushing this hard,” was a gigantic red flag.)
Bethany is simply a younger, naïve Betty, a replacement Betty, Don repeating past mistakes. Nothing made that clearer than to have the two of them, Betty and Bethany, in the same restaurant, wearing similarly colored dresses and blond hair in an updo, and to watch Don squirm as he was put into a corner about why he hasn’t called Bethany more often and about why he seems unknowable to Bethany, something Betty also complained about. “Don’t you want to be close with anyone?” Bethany asked, while desperately asking for more “intense, prolonged contact” with Don.
By contrast, Don’s behavior with Faye when they went on their date – after which he declined to physically go further than necking in the cab, unlike what he allowed Bethany to do to him in the cab – was starkly different. Faye reminds me of Rachel Mencken, a smart, educated businesswoman who exudes confidence and who is in control of her own life. With Rachel, Don opened up a bit, revealed himself to her, like sharing a story about his mother in a way he’d never done with Betty, at least not willingly. While speaking with Faye, he voluntarily “took off” his emotional coat and gave it to her by mentioning how he wasn’t welcome at Gene’s party, how Gene thinks Henry’s his father, again, something he would've never done with Bethany who remarked that every date with Don seemed like a first one because she didn’t know him at all.
The Joan-Joey-Peggy storyline was challenging to watch as Joan was mercilessly sexually harassed by Joey, aided and abetted by mooner Stan, as the impudent Joey reeled off these lines to and about Joan:
“The big Ragu . . . she’s an overblown secretary.” (Said to Peggy.)
“What do you do around here besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?” (Said to Joan after she said his behavior won’t be “tolerated here.”)
“You’re not some young girl off the bus. I don’t need some madam from a Shanghai whorehouse to show me the ropes.” (To Joan.)
Joey targeting Joan for his barrage of insults and ongoing, unrepentant, sexually hostile disrespect, and Joan’s angry response toward Peggy served to illustrate the different places Joan and Peggy are in.
Joan is of old school thinking. She went to Don, then to Lane, hoping they'd just take care of the problem for her. She didn't say directly what happened to her and she veiled her issues under the weak heading of “there have been complaints” so that it didn’t appear as though she was the only one having problems with Joey. She thought her indirect methods were best, however they’re not getting the job done, not anymore.
Peggy’s way -- directness, no BS, taking on Stan’s baloney – is the one that is commanding respect in the workplace. With Don urging Peggy to seize the power (“I wouldn’t tolerate that if I were you . . . You want some respect, go out there and get it for yourself.”), Peggy did just that by firing the little pissant who posted the obscene cartoon of Joan on her office window and idiotically wised off to Peggy when she called him on it. To Joan -- who only feels empowered and comfortable in taking on other women and who clearly wanted Don to swoop in and rescue her from Joey’s nonsense -- found Peggy’s decisiveness extremely threatening, which is why I think she was so nasty to Peggy in the elevator, because Joan had lost her power while Peggy had gained it.
Oh . . . on the scenes of Betty -- who mistakenly believes Don is “living the life” -- where she fled to the restaurant bathroom after seeing Don on a date with her younger doppelganger and became very, very upset (smoking up a storm, sweating, dropping her purse), coupled with the longing gaze she directed at Don when he appeared at Gene’s birthday party (to which he was not invited courtesy of the increasingly angry Henry Francis, who intentionally crushed Don’s boxes in the garage and suggested to Betty that they’d rushed into their marriage . . . ya think?!), those were also big, stinkin’ red flags.
And hearing the Rolling Stones on Mad Men -- the show I associate with fedoras and women in big skirts – was jarring. But obviously, the times, styles and social mores were in a state of flux and folks could either get on board or let them, like that younger swimmer in the pool whom Don wanted to beat to the wall, pass people by.
What did you think of “The Summer Man?” Of Don’s dealings with Bethany and Faye? Of the Joan-Peggy-Joey situation? The “we have everything including pent-up anger” Francis family? Anyone hear echoes from the "Marriage of Figaro" episode in season one?
Let’s just say this: I’m hopeful about Showtime's The Big C, no matter what Cathy’s diagnosis may be and how much time she may have left. Though the “death comedy” pilot was a tad uneven, I have faith in Laura Linney’s acting and believe that I’m going to love watching her tightly-wound high school teacher, wife and mother dispatch with her play-it-safe way of living her life.
I really liked the follow-up to the show’s very first scene: Cathy offered to pay double for a guy to immediately dig up her backyard and put in a sunken hot tub, barbecue pit and expand the deck. She’d wanted a pool, she’d asked for a pool, but reluctantly agreed to go along with the contractor’s recommendation. Went along to be nice. She said, “That’s fine, just do that,” so as not to make trouble, though she WAS insistent about the work getting started ASAP.
Later, she put her foot down, told him that she didn’t really want to do what he’d suggested and that, damn it, she wanted a pool like she said originally. Bring out the biggest digger you’ve got and get cracking, she said. For those of us who allow ourselves to get steamrolled too often (my hand is up), seeing Cathy muster the courage to assert herself was very satisfying. (Reminded me of the satisfaction drawn from watching fellow cancer patient Walter White on AMC’s Breaking Bad finally stop letting the world walk all over him once he realized his days were numbered with a cancer diagnosis.)
That’s from where I think the joy of watching this show will come, from watching Cathy emerge from her vanilla, suburban slumber. The emphasis is on, well, NOW, that, and enjoying life in a “I’m just having desserts and liquor” kinda way.
As for Weeds’ season six premiere, while I really liked the gallows humor in the season premiere (especially with Andy making all the wrong choices with his short-lived fiancé and the mallet quips), Nancy was starting to bug me with her selfishness. My irritation was given a voice by Shane and Silas who observed that Nancy, in her haste to go on the run with her family, took the time to pack stuff for herself -- including an entire bag of shoes – but didn’t afford either of them the same opportunity. If they’re leaving for good, the least Nancy could’ve done would’ve been to have let them grab a bag, particularly if she was packing shoes.
I’m just surprised that Nancy didn’t have them stop for an iced coffee for herself on the way to Andy’s house to take his van. But then again, she was drunk. And had just learned that her middle son is a killer, so I suppose I should cut her some slack.
Divorce on TV
After watching AMC's Mad Men’s Don Draper and Betty Francis do a pretty poor job of handling their divorce – as their children, especially their daughter Sally, suffer emotionally – I started thinking about how divorce on TV is done, at least these days.
*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*
After this episode concluded, the first thing I asked my husband, with whom I was watching it, was, “What would we do if we walked in on that?” That, of course, was the most shocking scene of the episode (other than Betty’s face-slapping of Sally after the 10-year-old had impulsively cut her hair), the one where Sally acted like a normal, curious kid, except that she picked the wrong venue in which she should've, shall we say, explored.
What happened next was an unfortunate overreaction on the part of Sally’s friend’s mother: Bringing Sally home and shaming her, but I suppose that’s probably what would’ve happened in 1965. (Betty then storming into Sally's room and threatening to cut Sally’s fingers off as the penalty for lying and for her "transgression" . . . Mother. Of. The. Freakin'. Year.)
Betty is becoming so harsh in her treatment of Sally that it's growing more difficult to sit through these mother-daughter scenes, particularly when Betty thinks that everything Sally does is in some way directed at her, as opposed to Sally's way of crying out for help. Sally’s humanity, her imperfections, seem to gall Betty, like they're an affront to Betty's vision of the perfect suburban family and must be eliminated, or ignored, no matter the cost. So cold is Betty toward Sally that she didn’t even accompany Sally to the psychiatrist’s office; she had Carla bring her instead. (As Dr. Edna said, I think it’s Betty who needs the therapy more than Sally.)
Sally has been practically invisible to Betty for so long. Sure, Betty was able to tell the child psychologist that Sally took the death of her grandfather especially hard, but Betty never really helped Sally get through all of that grief. Weeks later, when Sally's little brother was born and there was that whole naming-the-baby-Gene-and-sleeping-in-dead-Grandpa Gene’s-room which thoroughly freaked Sally out, Betty was largely oblivious to her daughter’s pain.
To lighten up the mood last night, I enjoyed the delightfully caper-ish storyline where the folks from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce completely played the rival advertising agency that’s been snapping up some of SCDP’s accounts, making the competition think that SCDP was cutting a high-priced TV ad for the Honda pitch. Notwithstanding Roger’s attempts to fatally sabotage the Honda account – because he fought the Japanese in World War II and still considered them the enemy – SCDP’s subterfuge and appeal to the Honda people’s code of honor won out in the end. Though SCDP didn't get the account, at least Don got the competition to shell out major bucks to try to win it, hobbling their future ability to make pitches for other clients.
Over the course of the past two episodes, is it possible that Don’s confrontation with Allison in “The Rejected” -- where Allison quit and called Don a mean person – was a catalyst of sorts to get him to right his ship and (hopefully) put an end to the sad, mean, drunken divorce guy who pays for sex routine? He hasn't seemed his old charming, dapper self in quite some time. (In last night's episode, he was, once again, seeing Bethany, who’s potentially a mate, not just a bed partner, though I still think she’s a younger version of Betty.)Throw in the surprisingly open chat Don had with Faye in the break room, where he uttered a massive understatement (“It is not going well.”) and confessed that his daughter was going to start seeing a psychiatrist and that he misses his children when they’re not around and yet when he drops them off at his old house he's relieved, and I'm wondering if we're seeing Don gradually turn the corner.
A moment of levity from last week: Seeing Peggy’s head appear in the glass part of the wall between her office and Don's, peering into the room to see what was going on after Allison heaved a paperweight at Don and broke some glass made me laugh out loud.
Another observation from last week: The way in which the news of Trudy’s pregnancy played out between Pete and Peggy was delicate and awkward and real as they silently acknowledged that this won’t be Pete’s first child. That look they exchanged at the end of the episode . . . priceless.
Speaking of Peggy, that Life Magazine gal who invited Peggy to the party, Joyce . . . that situation didn’t go the way that I expected. I was greatly impressed that Peggy didn’t flip out over Joyce’s sexual overture like the way Joan did with her roommate in season one. But then again, most of these episodes have been surprising me lately. I never know what to expect, anything from Lane Pryce wearing a steak belt buckle and heckling a movie, to Roger Sterling playing Santa Claus and Betty's house getting trashed in a home invasion.
It’s never too early to start thinking about the fourth season of Mad Men, which kicks off on Sunday, July 25.
Though series guru Matthew Weiner has been reluctant to reveal anything about what the fourth season will bring – season three concluded in December 1963 with Don toting luggage to a new apartment, Betty on a plane with Henry and baby Gene to get a quickie Reno divorce from Don, the formation of the new ad agency (Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) based in a hotel suite, and Sally and Bobby Draper chillin’ in their Ossining home with Carla – these promos that are floating around emphasize the “fresh start” angle.
Meanwhile the promo below highlights Betty’s supposed “fresh start” with Henry. But Betty's still got Don, the father of her three children, to deal with, so how “fresh” can all of these starts be with these folks toting around some significant baggage, literally and figuratively?
