Mad Men: A Woman's Worth

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

What. In. The. World. Was. That?

Dollar bills balled up and angrily hurled at a woman's face.

A married woman with a baby at home asked to put out in order to land an account for her firm.

Another married woman at an audition asked to turn around slowly so men could examine her figure, not her acting abilities.

Two ad campaigns which used women's bodies to sell products: One with a nude Lady Godiva image, the other by comparing a woman and her body to a car and its mechanical parts.

Women were but mere commodities in this episode. Things to be bought and sold. Possessed. Controlled. Consumed. Enjoyed by men. Discarded when they became too old, too used, too familiar. We always knew that the men on Mad Men viewed women this way, but never had their views been so nakedly laid bare.

Don -- himself the product of a commercial exchange of sex -- gave lame lip-service to his objection to prostituting Joan out to a client in order to get the Jaguar account. (I tried to imagine his reaction if someone had ever suggested that he lend Betty or Megan out for a night in order to win an account, and all I came up with were violent images in my head, Don's fists in a ball.) But for all his protestations, Don seemed more upset that he didn't win Jaguar on purely the merits of his own pitch, his own charm and brilliance, without Joan muddying the waters, detracting from his golden boy image.

Yet with Peggy, Don has always been Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On the one hand, he treasures Peggy's insight, talent and loyalty. But on the other hand, he takes her for granted, like she's a pesky little sister whom he can berate and embarrass without consequence because, at day's end, they're family.

You'd think that the son of a prostitute would know better than to throw crumpled up wads of cash into a woman's face in an attempt to belittle her and her accomplishments, as though whatever value she offers him is somehow contemptible and not worthy of respect. He should know that's not going to go over well.

Don has always acted as though he was Peggy's knight in shining armor, that he singled her out in order to give her a chance but in reality, she made the name for herself. Her talent was initially recognized in season one by Freddy Rumsen, who called it to Don's attention. And when Pete, with whom Don was feuding at the time, objected to the involvement of a secretary on an ad campaign, Don christened her a copywriter. The move was more about Don one-upping Pete than him championing a talented young woman. When the partners fled the sinking Sterling Cooper ship at the end of season three, Don treated Peggy shabbily, diminished her again like his kid sister. Although Don encouraged Peggy to return to the workplace after she had a baby, Peggy bailed him out with that whole Bobbie Barrett mess. She was at Don's side when he hit rock bottom. Neither of them can hold a moral high ground over the other. But they're not brother and sister. There's nothing tying them together except for good will, which Don torpedoed with the straw that broke the camel's back, with those crumpled dollar bills. How ironic in an episode about women's worth.

While he was screwing up his relatinship with Peggy, Don has no idea what to make of his wife Megan's declaration that she has a career that's just as important as his own and that if it leads her to Boston, he has no right to tell her she can't take it. He can't control her like he did with Betty, or Peggy for that matter. Megan's a mystery to him. Don just can't stop himself from stepping in it. Megan, meanwhile, like Joan and Peggy before her, was also treated like a piece of meat on her audition, asked to spin around in front of men who was casting for a play, her figure more important than whether she knew her lines.
Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Mad Men -- A Triad of Weirdness

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

Last week's Mad Men episode featured an unexpected fistfight between, of all people, Lane Pryce and Pete Campbell. This week Roger Sterling dropped acid. What'll happen next week, Joan Harris will burn her bra? If the parade of ugly late 60s clothing didn't already clue you in, we are deep into the cliched 60s now and I suspect that things will get uglier with each passing installment.

This "Far Away Places" episode unfolded in a different format for Mad Men: Three different stories began at one point in time at the office then took off to follow Peggy's day (including her midday, pot-fueled interlude with a stranger), Roger indulging in LSD and coming to the conclusion that he and Jane are finished and Don's day, specifically his intense fight with Megan. It's been a few days since I first saw this episode and I'm still processing what it all means.

First, Peggy. She went all Don Draper-during-the-Jantzen pitch on the Heinz people. She told the naysayers that the two pitches she'd worked up for them, based on their explicit wishes, were brilliant and that if they didn't like them, they were knuckleheads. And she wasn't wrong. Don did essentially the same thing when he ordered the bathing suit guys out of his office after they responded poorly to his advertising campaign last season.

Seeing that Don has taken off in the middle of the work day on too many occasions to count, Peggy followed his lead after her failed pitch and went to the movies. But she did it 60s style, by smoking pot with a stranger and putting her hands down his pants during the film. Is Peggy trying to literally follow Don by screwing around with strangers? Couple the way in which Peggy's boyfriend Abe complained that all she did was work and Peggy panicking because she couldn't find those violet candies (the ones Don once told Bobby that Don's dad used to carry) and her emotional connection to Don couldn't be clearer.

Don, meanwhile, flipped out when Megan, in the heat of an argument about him not taking her career seriously, invoked his mother. (Has he not been totally honest about his background with her?) Don was thoroughly unhinged, unable to listen to her explain that she loves work and felt guilty about not helping her creative team (which, as her boss, he should applaud). In a blind, orange sherbet-induced rage, Don abandoned Megan at Howard Johnson's, which she didn't find quite as charming as he did, another thing that set him off.

However, unlike Betty, who suffered through Don's baloney for so many years, Megan wasn't having it and found her own way back home without leaving any word for Don that she was safe, his punishment for selfishly ditching her in a strange place. Megan, despite her youth, seems quite capable of going toe-to-toe with Don even when he chases her down in their living room and tackles her like she was a running back and he a burly center on the losing football team. His emotional declaration that he thought he'd "lost" her seemed to melt her defenses, but if he keeps acting like a caveman toward his modern wife, this "I'm in charge" attitude is going to get old. Roger and Jane serve as a cautionary tale.

Acid helped Roger and Jane take down their miserable marriage which began much like Don and Megan's, with the older, affluent ad man sleeping with a young, nubile secretary. The days of Jane in bed writing poetry about her affection for Roger while her long, wavy hair cascades around her shoulders and she clings to crisp white sheets, have been replaced by hostility and hideous clothing. Roger, under LSD's influenced, tuned in to his inner voice telling him that he and Jane should part ways. (Now will he become a proper baby daddy to Kevin, even though he doesn't yet know that Joan's ditched her louse of a spouse?)

After this buffet of oddities, I can't wait to see what happens next. What did you think of this strange Mad Men trip?

Image credit: Jordin Althaus/AMC.

'Mad Men's' Weiner: Finale Looks at Life You Want to Live

"Tomorrowland is about who you want to be," that's what Mad Men creator/writer Matthew Weiner said about the season four finale. The episode, Weiner said, was about "what are you going to make of your life."

In the case of Don, that would be the same mistake Roger Sterling made, at least in my opinion.

Jon Hamm offered some insightful commentary in the AMC video above, about the fact that Don is starting a relationship with someone who doesn't really know much about him smacks of Don and Betty 2.0.

Of all the interviews in the video, I agree with Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) the most.

What did you think of Weiner's assertion that the finale was about what you want to make of your life?

'Mad Men' Finale -- Tomorrowland

Image credit: AMC

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season finale of Mad 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.)

Mad Men -- Chinese Wall (Or, the Ad Agency's in Trouble)

Image credit: AMC

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

These are some dark days for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. After spending the bulk of this season focused on the downward-spiraling Don (who seems on the precipice of a relapse to his bad boy tendencies with the drinking and Alison 2.0), the darkness descended upon the brightly decorated home of the ad upstarts at SCDP.

We knew that Roger losing Lucky Strike was going to rear its head and upend the entire, cozy, complacency at SCDP. (You don’t blow off a multi-million-dollar account like North American Aviation without trying to desperately find another way to save it.) However I didn’t expect the fall-out to hit the fan so soon, thought that maybe Matt Weiner & Co. would hold off on SCDP’s near-end of days until the season finale.

And, while viewers knew that, despite all the hard work Don put into reshaping his life (cutting back on the drinking, dating an appropriate woman for him, journaling and going to the gym), he wasn’t going to be perfect and would likely slip up. I expected Don to mess up a bit in the form of drinking, maybe slack off on going to the gym as he worked longer hours, but I did NOT expect for him to sleep with another secretary, particularly given that he’s in a serious relationship with Faye, even ‘fessed up about his alias. Even though Don did give Megan the once-over at the end of the previous episode, I was surprised that he went there. (It was the same surprise I experienced when he started sleeping with Miss Farrell in season three.)

Has Don learned nothing? Don needs to start journaling again so he can see, in his own handwriting, how history is repeating itself and he’s doing himself no favors. I’m just waiting for the Dick Whitman situation to crop up once more to give Don a swift kick in the pants.

Aside from Don’s shaky foothold on leading a healthy life (emotionally and physically), Roger -- he of the stark white hair and the stark white office featuring a print with a blinding white background populated by little black dots -- found himself in danger of being swallowed up by darkness. He sunk to pathetic depths when he didn't tell his colleagues about Lucky Strike in time for them to do anything about it, and when he stood three feet away from them and lied about speaking on the phone with Lee Garner Jr., dovetailed by his cowardly flight to a Manhattan hotel when he was supposed to be in Raleigh having a face-to-face visit with Lee. After coasting by on his father’s coattails for his entire life -- with the exception of his stint in World War II – Roger now seems to be flailing professionally as well as personally.

He tried, once again, to use Joan as salve to make himself feel better, forgetting (or perhaps completely unaware) that he’d torpedoed any shot at a serious relationship with her with his calloused response to her pregnancy, saying he loved her “maybe” and, the icing on the cake, saying that if she had the baby, it wouldn’t be his. Having destroyed his first marriage with drinking and philandering, Roger’s now destroying his second marriage with the same behavior as he miserably skulked back into his home where his bright as a penny young wife/former secretary was waiting to show him copies of his newly published memoir and to tell him how proud she was. Sullen, Roger chose to not fill her in on the cataclysmic events of the past 24 hours and acted as though everything was fine.

As for Pete, who’d really blame him, the man who covered Don’s rear end in the North American Aviation imbroglio, for fleeing the sinking ship that is SCDP, particularly when he and Trudy just had a child? Watching Don chastise Pete for not being “focused” on the Glo-Coat account while Trudy was in the hospital and then accusing Pete of freaking the clients out (when Don spent the whole day at the hospital when Betty was giving birth to Gene), might’ve been the last straw. Or the 47th.

Peggy, well, I don’t know what to make of her hippie-fueled afterglow being doused by news of Lucky Strike, coupled with her feelings that when something good happens to her, she’s going to be punished for it with something bad. I did love seeing her triumph with the Playtex account despite the fact that the spurned moron Stan failed to tell her that she had lipstick on her teeth . . . which kind of proved her point, she was happy she got the account but was embarrassed no one told her about the lipstick.

What’d you think of “Chinese Wall?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'Mad Men:' The Beautiful Girls

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

This episode was called “The Beautiful Girls,” but what it should’ve been called was “Beautiful Girls Put in Challenging, Compromising Situations.” It opened with Don and Faye taking their relationship to the next level as they literally knocked over a lamp while slamming around on Don’s bed.

The next day wasn’t so amorous for Don. In a day from hell, Don’s secretary died while sitting at her desk while he was in the middle of a meeting with clients and the staff comically tried to drag her body away so the clients wouldn’t see. This occurred right after Don’s daughter Sally ran away from home and begged for him to allow her to live with him “all the time,” by promising, “I’ll be good.”

It was hard not to feel for Sally who hates living at home and her mother clearly dislikes having her there as well, resents Sally. Sally was willing to scream, yell, kick, to do whatever it took so she wouldn’t have to return to Ossining to where Betty does not seem a whit happier than she was when she was married to Don and where she takes Sally’s unhappiness as a personal insult. When Don angrily told Betty to come and get Sally because he had “a business to run,” Betty replied, “Because it’s so easy. It’s so much for to take care of her. Enjoy . . . Enjoy Don, I’m meeting Henry in the city tomorrow night, I’ll get her then.”

The scene where Sally made French toast for her father – she said Carla had taught her how to make the dish, though I doubt she was taught to top with rum – reminded me of the scene after Betty was still in the hospital after having had Gene, where Don made hash and eggs for himself and Sally late at night and sat next to one another at the kitchen counter. The moment was a bonding one, a sweet one between father and daughter, an indication that Sally feels more connected to him than to her mother.

As for Don asking Faye to deal with a distraught Sally after Don had made it clear she had to go back home with Betty (this was the day after he’d asked Faye to watch Sally for an afternoon after she’d turned up at his office), I agree with what Faye said to Don afterward: That asking Faye to deal with Sally was a test, whether unconscious on Don's part or not, to see if Faye’s up to the task of dealing with his kids. I think the jury’s still out on how Faye would deal with the kids if she and Don made things official as she seems very stiff and formal around Sally, contrasting with how comfortable she seems with adults.

Then there was Joan, rocking a set of glasses in that scene at home, who wasn’t having a much better time of things, as her husband was informed he’d be shipped to Vietnam right after basic training. Roger tried to buck up her spirits by scheduling her for a massage then taking her to a dinner, after Mrs. Blankenship died. Then it became even grimmer: Joan and Roger got mugged and then, while they were full of adrenaline, did it in a filthy alley, steps away from where a gun was pointed at them.

Meanwhile, Peggy dispatched with an arrogant, big-mouthed radical activist named Abe who thought she’d find charming his criticism of her for working at an ad agency and doing work for clients who refused to hire African-Americans, especially when said criticism took the form of a “poem.” While Peggy seems fond of dabbling in the counter-culture, she doesn’t seem well suited for someone who’s got a political litmus test for the people he dates.

Most surprising were Peggy’s remarks about racial and gender discrimination: “Most of the things Negroes can’t do, I can’t do either and nobody seems to care . . . half of the meetings take place over golf or tennis at a bunch of clubs where I’m not allowed to be a member. The University Club said the only way I could eat dinner there was if I arrived in a cake.”

I loved it when Peggy got up and left the bar after the sanctimonious Abe, who clearly was blind to gender discrimination, joked about whether there was a need for a “civil rights march for women.”

Best line of the night came from Burt Cooper when speaking of Mrs. Blankenship: “She was born in 1898 in a barn. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She’s an astronaut.”

Overall, this episode felt odd to me, not bad “odd,” just odd, odd, with wildly varying themes like Civil Rights and feminism, fall-out from a divorce where a child doesn’t like her custodial parent, the concern of a wife whose husband is being sent to a war zone and the fear of one's own mortality in the face of a colleague's sudden death.

What did you think of “The Beautiful Girls?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'Mad Men' Cast Throws in Their Two Cents on The Summer Man

It was interesting to see what Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks had to say about how their storylines played out in "The Summer Man" as they had very different perspectives than I did on it.

They actresses believe Peggy was proven to have made the wrong move in firing Joey, which they said established Joan as "just" a powerless secretary and Peggy as a "humorless bitch." I, however, think Peggy was seizing power and respect, as Don advised her to do, and showed that the boorishness has consequences. She also showed that she could directly wield power, not just indirectly manipulate people to get what she wants like Joan was trying to do, but failed.

While watching the AMC video recap of the episode, I also noticed for the first time that Don's gift to Gene was a big stuffed elephant. He brought an elephant into the room. Into his former house (is it still the one that the Francis family was supposed to have already vacated according to the divorce decree?) Hmm.

'Mad Men's' Creator: 'Don and Peggy Love Each Other'

I intentionally avoided watching the AMC video, “Inside Mad Men: The Suitcase” before writing my review of the episode because I didn’t want to be tainted by what Matthew Weiner, Jon Hamm or Elisabeth Moss had to say about the powerful seventh episode, “The Suitcase” before I gave my own spin on it.

That being said, I found it intriguing to hear creator/writer Weiner say, “Don and Peggy love each other. There’s no doubt about it.”

Then Weiner added, “Peggy’s there to help him up” from his downward spiral. I certainly hope so. This version of Don that we’ve seen this season, damn, is it depressing.

'Mad Men:' The Suitcase (Otherwise Known as When Peggy Became Anna, Sort Of)

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

We always knew that Peggy and Don had a special relationship. They both have deep secrets that they’ve only partially shared with one another . . . which is more than they’ve shared with others.

Don knows all about Peggy’s secret pregnancy, her involuntarily mental commitment and didn’t care. He still wanted her to work for him and was determined to pretend as though her whole pregnancy and her denial of the pregnancy, never happened.

Therefore he trusted her, trusted her when he and Bobbie Barrett got into a booze-fueled car wreck and Peggy not only bailed them out but let Bobbie stay in her apartment until her bruises faded. He chased Peggy down and begged her to work at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, saying that if she didn’t work for him he’d spend his whole life trying to hire her. He also added that little chestnut about how he sees himself in Peggy and that’s why he’s as hard on her as he is on himself.

For her part, Peggy felt indebted to Don for not only plucking her from the secretarial pool and christening her as a copywriter, but for keeping her secret and not treating her with sexist kid gloves.

That was all backstory for this strangely intimate episode, “The Suitcase.”

“I got drawn into his web,” Peggy said, explaining to Mark why she was going to be late to their dinner after Don pressured and berated Peggy into staying at the office with him. Don may have or may not have realized that he was doing anything he could to get Peggy -- who’s very susceptible to Don’s guilt trips -- to stay in his company for the evening, including revealing things about himself personally (about being a farm boy, about his father, about Uncle Mac, about Korea), so he wouldn’t have to face the fact that he would have to call Anna’s house in California and be told that Anna ("the only person in the world who really knew me") had died, something which broke his heart, left Dick Whitman feeling completely alone.

At first, the tension was over the fact that Peggy wanted to leave and Don didn’t want her to. To be fair, Peggy didn’t tell Don until she was an hour late for Mark’s surprise dinner for her, that it was her birthday and she had dinner plans. When Don learned that she had plans, he got all snippy and nasty but told her to go, though he clearly didn’t want her to. Only thing was, Peggy didn’t really want to go. She didn’t want to have dinner with Mark and her family. What she wanted seemed a lot closer to what Don was looking for that night, even as she was verbally lashing back at Don, giving as good as she got from him.

This all seemed like one big test for Peggy who, three times during “The Suitcase,” had men telling her that the money spent on her or handed to her (whether in the form of a salary, a set of phony business cards or a dinner in a nice restaurant) meaning that she owed them something, a notion she rejected on all three accounts.

What DID move Peggy wasn’t people telling her exactly how much they’d spent a lot for a shrimp cocktail, it was when people demonstrated that not only did they trust her and have enough confidence in her to treat her like a smart, professional woman, but also had the wherewithal to back up what they were saying. (Duck’s empty promises of making her a creative director were all just a pretense to get her into bed again. The petulant Mark used her birthday as a tool to ingratiate himself with Peggy’s mother, regardless of what Peggy may have wanted to do to celebrate her day.)

Don -- mired in the depths of his personal alcoholic rock bottom -- argued with Peggy (who was unafraid of telling him off, accusing him of stealing ideas while drunk and not sharing credit) and made her cry in a way that reminded me of a big brother-little sister relationship. However Don also built Peggy up by telling her she’s smart and “cute as hell,” but not because he was trying to get sex out of her. Peggy also knows that Don is not going to impulsively give her her walking papers if she breaks dinner plans. He’s not going to call Peggy a whore, even when he asks her if she knows who the father of her baby was and he learns that Peggy’s mother thinks it was Don. In fact, I doubt Don would sever the relationship with Peggy (she’s the one who threatened to do so when Don didn’t ask her to join SCDP, he initially told her to). Their odd relationship can withstand fighting and tears, like some kind of strong, albeit somewhat dysfunctional marriage.

Come to think of it, that little grasp of the hand at the end of the episode, where Don touched Peggy’s hand after asking her not to criticize his ideas for the Samsonite campaign (although he’d been pretty brutal to her ideas the previous night), seemed like an indication from Don that what he wanted from Peggy wasn’t sex – which he could get from anyone -- it was a real, emotional connection which he sought, like what he shared with Anna. Despite his put-downs of Peggy, which seem to worsen as his feelings of self-hatred increase, Don trusts Peggy with secrets, like the OUI arrest and that his dad was killed by getting kicked by a horse. He didn't trust Betty that way. Which is why, as Don lost the one woman on earth whom he felt truly knew and loved him despite all his frailties, he clung to Peggy, the new Anna.

There were more than a few moments of weirdness in “The Suitcase:”

Weirdest Moment I: “Why is there a dog in the Parthenon?”

Weirdest Moment II: Listening to Sterling’s Gold tapes about Bert Cooper and “the queen of perversions” Ida Blankenship (!) and the removal of Cooper’s testicles.

Weirdest Moment III: Duck wanting to leave a “present” for Don and Don then crying “uncle” when Duck had him pinned. So much for Don the tough guy who clocked Jimmy Barrett in the face.

Come to think of it, the entire episode was saturated in boxing analogies, with the Liston-Ali fight as the jumping off point. When Liston went down shortly after the match began and all the folks in the bar were yelling, “Get up,” I kept thinking that that’s how I felt about Don. I wanted someone to yell at him to get the hell up off the mat, stop staying uncle, stop wrecking his career and sabotaging every relationship he has left. Get up off the mat Don.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

'Mad Men:' Waldorf Stories

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

We learned, quite early on, that this was one of those what-comes-around-goes-around episodes. We got to see Don as an eager fur salesman who'd hounded Roger Sterling for a job, tried to impress and ingratiate himself to Roger, even showed up in the lobby of Sterling Cooper in order to "accidentally" run into him. Then, many years later, as Don’s been nominated for a coveted advertising award, Roger felt as though he’d found Don and, therefore, deserved credit when Don succeeded.

We recall that Peggy was once Don’s eager secretary who was “found” by Don (actually found by Freddy but it was Don who promoted Peggy) to have talent, whose talent Don uses, without providing proper, public credit, to accept an award for work to which Peggy contributed. And Peggy, justifiably, feels jealous.

Then there’s Danny Siegel (Doyle from Gilmore Girls) who’s like a hybrid version of those characters: He’s an eager wanna-be ad man – but he’s got connections to Roger’s wife’s cousin – who tried to impress Don and who pressed too hard. Drunk Don (!) then proceeded to steal “Roger’s idiot’s” idea and pitched it to a clients -- without providing credit -- after Don’s own advertising campaign idea fell flat.

There were a lot of hurt feelings during this episode. Peggy was hurt by Don's apparent blindness to her contributions which led to his Clio. Roger was hurt that Don didn’t credit him with plucking him out of the fur salesman business and hiring him, though the hungover Roger forgot/wasn’t sure that he even hired Don during his booze haze, kind of like how the drunken Don forgot that he used Danny’s “cure for the common [cereal]” line with the Life cereal people and was then guilted into hiring Danny, though he did try to slime his way out of it.

I loved seeing the early scenes between Don and Roger when Don was making the hard sell, slipping his portfolio of advertising ideas into the box containing the fur Roger had bought for Joan. (Ever notice how Don’s eyes seemed wider – literally – and he smiled a whole lot more in the flashbacks, like he did when he was in the flashbacks with Anna telling her that he was going to marry Betty?)

We saw the reappearance of the sad, drunk Don, who’s well on his way to becoming either a brooding Roger or an embarrassing Duck Phillips, who’s also divorced and whose kids are distant with him, largely because of his alcohol problem.

What was awful to watch was Don, fumbling his way through the Life cereal pitch, using the same “nostalgia” line he used in the season one finale, the one he’d so eloquently pitched to the Kodak people for “the Carousel.” Don was a mere shadow of what he was back then, when it dawned on him that family and loved ones were of paramount importance. Only he realized that fact a bit too late to salvage that particular Thanksgiving with Betty and the kids.



To make matters worse, sloppy, inebriated Don continued drinking on that Friday night after he won the Clio. He went home and slept with an advertising professional and woke up at noon on Sunday with a waitress named “Doris” in his bed who referred to him as “Dick,” because apparently he’d lapsed back into his original identity. He woke up from his bender to an irate phone call from his ex-wife Betty who reamed him out for being more than two hours late in picking up the kids as he'd promised to do, making Betty and Henry miss an appointment. Don didn’t even know it was Sunday yet.

And I thought that the post-Christmas party Allison situation, coupled with her emotional resignation, might’ve been a turning point for him. What is Don, another Rescue Me/Tommy Gavin type who needs to reach about a billion low-points before getting the message that things need to change? If he doesn’t allow that message to seep into his consciousness soon, he could indeed be headed for Duck territory.

As for Peggy, that moron Stan and the Vick's campaign . . . I admire the courage Peggy frequently displays when she’s facing difficult situations with no obvious way out. I certainly wouldn’t have taken the route of stripping naked to prove that Stan’s a full-of-crap-blow-hard when it came to his "we should all live purely and naked" line, but that’s why I’m a fan of Peggy’s. She takes you to very unexpected, and oftentimes pretty great places.

Most intriguing moment: Don reaching for Joan’s hand -- after Joan and Roger had already clasped hands under the table -- just before the Clio award in their category was announced. Plus the way Don kissed Joan after he won seemed curious, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.

What’d you think of “Waldorf Stories?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Emmy Awesomeness: 'Mad Men,' 'Modern Family' and Fallon

"I love TV. I love watching TV. . . Let's have some fun tonight." -- Jimmy Fallon, Emmy host

I really enjoyed the Emmy show last night, mostly because of Jimmy Fallon. Starting with the fantastic "Born to Run" dance number -- Betty White! Jorge Garcia! Tina Fey! Jon Hamm! Even Wacky Kate Gosselin! Glee people! -- it felt fun and light.



Of course there was also that Modern Family/George Clooney skit. Loved it.



And Fallon's tribute to the shows which ended -- 24, Law & Order and Lost -- . . . classic. ("The island it was mythical, and in the end they died. I didn't understand it but I tried.")



As for the winners, well, before the awards show I'd written four words in my notebook: Modern Family, Mad Men. And they won best comedy and best drama. As it should be. As it was meant to be. (I was also supremely pleased that the season three finale of Mad Men got a writing award for "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." No offense, but I really didn't want the Lost series finale to win any writing awards. Yes, I'm still that bitter.)

I was surprised that the spectacular Bryan Cranston won another Emmy for Breaking Bad -- though he's amazing -- because he was up against some extremely stiff competition in Jon Hamm, Hugh Laurie, Matthew Fox (I don't blame him for the finale), Michael C. Hall and Kyle Chandler. And he was so very gracious in his victory. It was nice to see Cranston's co-star, Aaron Paul, also win, as he looked clearly stunned upon having beaten Terry "Smoke Monster" O'Quinn, Michael "Ben Linus" Emerson, John "Roger Sterling" Slattery and Andre Braugher.

The biggest mistake of the night came in the best supporting actress in a drama category. Don't get me wrong. I like Archie Panjabi in The Good Wife. She's intriguing. But there's no way her first season as Kalinda was superior to Elisabeth Moss' Peggy Olson on Mad Men.

What were your favorite/least favorite Emmy moments/awards?

'Mad Men:' Public Relations (Season Premiere)

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

Who is Don Draper? Someone who was almost unrecognizable during the season four premiere of Mad Men.

His confidence in everything appeared to have been shaken: Don screwed up an interview with a reporter from Advertising Age, that was meant to promote Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, by refusing to say much of anything at all. He appeared to be flailing around in the sleek, glass-walled confines of SCDP as the face of an underdog firm with money issues and no conference table. He hasn’t been eating, according to his housekeeper. He was being set up on dates by, of all people, Jane Sterling and even got shot down (as far as walking her up to her apartment) by her young friend in a cab at the end of their date. And, most shocking, Don has been hiring a woman to have sex with him and repeatedly slap him in the face, because, apparently, he’s been a very bad boy and deserves to be punished.

Don Draper is now into being dominated? (Don, the child of a prostitute who was nicknamed “the whore child,” wanted to be slapped around by a call girl? Freud would have a field day.)

It seems as though his postcard-perfect (on the outside) family, with wife, kids and the house in the ‘burbs, really was important to him after all – though he realized it too late – and he now knows, deep in his core, that his deceitful and duplicitous ways are responsible for that. No more trying to shift blame onto Betty. When the episode began, Don was still allowing Betty and Henry to live in the Ossining house for which he was paying the mortgage (so much for Henry saying he didn’t want Betty to owe Don anything) even though the divorce agreement says they were supposed to have moved out a month ago.

I literally was dumb-founded watching this version of Don Draper walk around, lonely and disconnected. He was almost like a foreign character who I didn’t recognize, save for Jon Hamm’s face. Even in the first three seasons of Mad Men, when Don had tremendous difficulty allowing people to capture a glimpse of his true feelings (Midge, Rachel, even, to some extent, Miss Farrell got to see them), he wasn’t THIS inaccessible, just going through the motions of life. Observing a depressed Don Draper was disorienting. It made everything, from SCDP to his dark apartment, feel unstable, different.

Was this dour episode – where the fit he threw over Jantzen’s two-piece bathing suit campaign that his clients rejected – the catalyst for Don to finally say, “Enough of the self-flagellation?” For him to evolve? The Wall Street Journal interview, where he promoted himself with vigor, seemed like a turning point.

Meanwhile, I loved – LOVED! – what a year has done to bolster Peggy’s confidence so much so that not only would she pull a caper like hiring two actresses to stage a faux fight (which evolved into a real one that necessitated bail) over ham so that they wouldn’t lose their account without consulting Don, but Peggy was willing to talk back to Don as good as she got. When Don was feeling extremely down, he tried, as he has in the past, to direct some of his ugly hurt onto Peggy, but this time, Peggy was having none of it. It was a glorious site to behold.

By the way . . . Joan in her own office, a vision.

As for Betty and Henry, all I can say is . . . ick. The two of them, together, have zero chemistry, and are extremely unsettling to watch, particularly under the attentive eyes of Henry’s calloused mother who later referred to Betty as a “silly woman” and chastised Henry for “living in that man’s dirt.” (“Silly,” maybe so, that sweet potato/pinching incident was embarrassing. But “dirt?” No.)

What did you think of the season premiere? Of sad Don? Of Betty and Henry?

Salon Takes on 'Mad Men's' Women: They Disappoint and Depress

Do the Mad Men women frequently get punished and and constantly let us down while the men behave badly yet skate away with their money, privilege and social standing in tact? That’s what Nelle Engoron asserted in her Salon piece, “Why ‘Mad Men’ is bad for women.” This one-time “champion” of Mad Men says she’s now jaded about its depiction of women:

“I’m increasingly disturbed by the striking difference in how men and women are portrayed . . . Even as it depicts rampant sexism, the show sides with the men. The men get off scot-free (if not scotch-free) while the women are subjected to repeated humiliation and misfortune, which is invariably attributed to their own flaws and poor choices.”

While saying that Don continues to be the “suave hero” of the show in spite his many bad acts, Betty, despite having insisted on divorcing Don, is considered a feminist disappointment:

“Being stuck in a life of mind-numbing domesticity is tragic only when the person is capable of — and desirous of — much more. But Betty seems less limited by her situation than by her intellect and character. We have no sense of what she’d do with her life if she hadn’t married, other than perhaps be a Holly Golightly party girl in Europe. Even when she finally leaves Don, it’s not to become independent but only to go to another man who wants to marry her and take care of her every little need.”

Even Peggy’s shyness – which I think she uses as a shield of self-protection as she tries to make it in a world ruled by men – takes a hit:

“While smart, creative and brave, Peggy isn’t allowed to be a full, rounded person and is instead portrayed as socially inept, humorless and utterly unable to connect with either men or women, remaining friendless and loveless. Her stiffness, introversion and social missteps are painful to watch, and her awkward attempts to be more ‘feminine’ fall flat.”

I don’t see things quite the same way. I believe that Don has indeed been penalized for his bad behavior. He lost something he coveted, though didn’t act as though he valued it because he’d never really had it growing up: His family, his educated and stunning trophy wife, their enviable beautiful home in the ‘burbs. He even sacrificed contact with his brother – for whose suicide Don feels responsible – in order to preserve his life with Betty and the kids. But since Betty said, "No mas," Don has been booted from the all-American suburbs, where Miss Farrell said all the dads looked the same, and back to the city to live the life of a bachelor again, a life which, according to the New York Times review of the season four premiere, isn’t all that fun, glamorous or satisfying.

Roger lost his daughter’s and his colleagues’ respect, plus they had to sell Sterling Cooper in order to pay for Roger’s divorce. A handful of Sterling Cooper's core staff – under the threat of having the firm sold to McCann – had to reconstitute itself in a new firm in a hotel suite, starting all over again largely because of the dominoes Roger and his affair (then marriage) with Jane set in motion.

Then there was writer Rachel Shukert who, in her piece ‘I Was Betty Draper,’ said she, a work-from-home writer who was frustrated with how her work was progressing, “empathized with” Betty on many levels, particularly when her own spouse was off working and earning the lion’s share of the household money:

“I understood the icy rage when she coldly offered her cheek to Don to kiss in the mornings. It wasn’t because of the lipstick on his collar or the empty bottle of rye – or at least, not just because. It was because he got to go off to be busy and brilliant and essential, while she got to stay at home, lining the drawers with stupid contact paper. The Drapers’ spats reminded me of the fights I had with my husband when I asked why he was at work until 2 in the morning, why it seemed he had to leave the country three weeks out of the month. ‘You don’t understand,’ he would answer angrily. ‘You don’t have to be financially responsible for another person.’ And I would shout back, more furious with myself than him: ‘God! Don’t you think I wish I was?’”

These characters certainly got under people’s skin.

Image credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC.

Giving 'Mad Men's' Women the Last Word

The folks from PopSugar have put together a video collection of one-liners uttered by the women during the first three seasons of Mad Men, proving that Roger Sterling doesn't corner the market on snarky commentary.

One of the best lines came from Midge, "You know the rules, I don't make plans and I don't make breakfast."

Do you have any favorites that are missing from this video?

A commenter on BuzzSugar asked where Betty's "My people are Nordic" quote was. Also missing, Betty's "Only boring people are boring" and any of the terrible one-liners she has directed at her kids. Surely there must be some Trudy one-liners that should've made it too.

What's In Store for 'Mad Men's' Women in Season Four?

Leading up to the Mad Men series premiere on Sunday night and in preparation for my pop culture column about the fourth season of the drama, I gave some thought as to what I hope the fourth season will bring for Betty Draper, freshly divorced from Don and married to Henry Francis; Joan Holloway Harris, back as the office manager for the newly formed ad agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce; and Peggy Olson, who got her emotionally and praise-withholding boss, Don Draper, to grovel in the series three finale in order to lure her to his new firm.

While working on the column, I also read a dense, academically-oriented, yet fascinating book, Mad Men and Philosophy which examines issues such as whether Don’s a bad person and why the self-confident Joan is the least progressive of the three main female stars, as well as examining the overall ethical/moral framework of the show.

If you were on the Mad Men writing staff, what scenarios and stories would you cook up for the ladies of Mad Men?

Image credits: AMC.

Lots O’ New ‘Fresh Start’ ‘Mad Men’ Promos from AMC

AMC just released a whole bunch of new promos for Mad Men’s fourth season – a few of them which had already been posted on YouTube two weeks ago -- emphasizing a “fresh start” for Don, Betty, Roger, Joan, Pete and Peggy.

I continue to wonder whether any of their "starts," or re-starts as the case may or may not be, can REALLY be all that fresh given that all these folks are still tied tightly together, no matter how much they may wish that they weren’t.

I found the promo for Joan – whom the video suggests is disappointed that her marriage to Greg hasn’t turned out to be what she thought it would be – and the one for Peggy – the only positive, hopeful, “Go Peggy go!” one – most intriguing.






Still countin’ down to the July 25 premiere.

To see all the promos, go to the Mad Men site.

The Evolution of Peggy Olson, in Pictures

Promotional material for Mad Men's fourth season is starting to pop up all over the place.

The latest source is USA Today's Pop Candy blog which ran several still photos from the new season including one startlingly different image of Peggy Olson. This got me to thinking about how much Peggy's changed over the past few seasons, going from Don's brand spankin' new secretary who wasn't sure if she should flirt with him, to the first female copywriter at Sterling Cooper, and to a pivotal member of the new ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce who's having an affair with Duck.

Here's Peggy from season one, fresh from secretarial school:

Peggy looked much different later on in season one:

Peggy, post-promotion (post-baby), in season two, after shedding her extra weight:

Season three's Peggy with a new do:

The new season four photo that I saw on USA Today:

What do you think of this season four Peggy photo? She looks much more business-like, older and more sophisticated than in season one.

After Getting Its Second Emmy, AMC's Trying to Lure New Fans to 'Mad Men'

On the heels of its back-to-back best dramatic show on television Emmy win, AMC has decided to try to lure new fans to Mad Men as it's about halfway through the third season.

One way to pull in some new eyeballs is to have a season three marathon which the network has slated for this Sunday, September 27 starting at 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. (See the AMC schedule here.)

Another is to produce a video explaining the "story thus far," kind of like a CliffsNotes for the entire Mad Men series.

It makes for an interesting parlor game to examine which clips the show's creators decided to use in this nearly five-minute summary. The video starts off with scenes from Don's affair with the odious Bobbie Barrett, Peggy's affair with Pete, the birth/adoption of Peggy and Pete's baby, Peggy's confession to Pete and Betty kicking Don out of the house and letting him return. Roger's infidelity and subsequent marriage to Don's secretary was also touched on briefly, as was the British invasion of Sterling Cooper. The remainder of the third season episodes, including the death of Grandpa Gene and the birth of Baby Gene (though not Sally's reaction to all of this), made the cut.



After watching it, do you think the video offers any clues to what might unfold in future episodes, especially given that it included the scene of the man who works in the New York governor's office openly flirting with a very pregnant belly?

Image credit: Dyna Moe/Nobody's Sweetheart.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Fog

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

This episode was so layered and nuanced on so many levels, that I just fell in love with “The Fog.” Liked it much more than the recent episodes.

Betty Had Her Baby

Who didn’t feel sorry for Betty during this episode? We were supposed to hate the patronizingly nasty Nurse Ratchet who was insensitive and downright cruel to Betty. Nurse Ratchet literally pinned Betty down when Betty was frightened and calling for her husband who she was afraid had left. She blithely told Betty that her ob/gyn was out at a fancy dinner in the city and dismissed Betty’s concerns about having a doctor she’d never met deliver her baby. The capper was when Betty felt as though she could no longer push (I’ve been there) and, instead of offering encouragement, threatened Betty, saying, “Either you can do it, or WE will, but it’s gonna come out some way.”

It’s no wonder that in her drug-induced “twilight sleep,” Betty sought out the comfort from her deceased parents. Betty envisioned her father Gene as a janitor, swishing a bloody mop around the Drapers’ kitchen floor, while her mother Ruthie was standing beside a well dressed man who we later learned had a head wound (a reference to the recently killed Medgar Evers about whom Sally had been talking?). Indicating that "this" is what happens to people who "speak up," Ruthie, clutching a bloodied cloth, advised her daughter, “Be happy with what you have.” Gene, who made no secret that he didn't approve of Betty’s life choices, said, “You’re a housecat. You’re very important and you have little to do.”

During the birth of the child that brought Don and Betty back together, Betty’s mind revisited whether she’d made the right choice in letting Don come back home. Interestingly, we learned later that Betty “allowed” Carla, their housekeeper/nanny, to leave, telling her friend Francine that she could handle two kids and a new baby. No housecat she.

Don Was Doting

Don, whose own mother died in childbirth, could not have behaved more like the model 1960s husband than he was in this episode when his third child was born. With the exception of his dalliance with the flight attendant in the first episode of the season, he hasn’t (that we know of) stepped out on Betty.

Don remained at the hospital during Betty’s labor (when he could’ve gone back to work, as Roger wanted him to do), and bonded with another expectant dad, a prison guard who said many prisoners blame bad parents for turning them into criminals, something with which Don strongly disagreed.

Don brought Betty flowers and took the kids to the hospital, where they were only allowed to wave to Betty and the baby from the sidewalk outside as children weren’t allowed inside. Don let Betty name the baby Gene, though he clearly didn’t like it, and was very sweet to Sally during their late night snack, where Don dished up what appeared to be hash and eggs. The two sat side-by-side in the dimly lit kitchen -- the same kitchen where Betty had the vision of seeing her father -- as Don told Sally, who was still grieving her grandfather’s death, that everything would be okay.

Peggy Wants What She’s Worth

But Don’s soothing words didn’t work on Peggy, who’d had her eyes opened to the fact that she is worth more than Sterling Cooper was paying her.

Duck Phillips, about whom I’d been wondering, tried to lure both Peggy and Pete to his new ad firm, he told them they’d be “sitting on velvet pillows” if they came with him. Heaping praise upon her talents after Pete left their secret lunch meeting in a snit, Duck said, “This is your time Peggy.”

Later, she went to Don and clearly laid out the reasons why she should get a raise: Her secretary didn’t respect her because she only made $71/week more than her, that other males were doing the same job (not as well as she had been) and were being paid more and that it was becoming increasingly costly to live in Manhattan on her salary.

Here, Don’s verbal pat on the head didn’t work. He made a bad joke about finding Peggy a cheaper secretary. When that fell flat, Don then tried to brush her off with his patented line, “It’s not a good time,” saying he’s been “fighting for paper clips around here.” “It’s not going to happen, not now,” he said, as if that was the end of the discussion. “You’re going to be fine Peggy,” he added, similar to the way in which he spoke with Sally in the kitchen.

Delicately touching a pair baby booties affixed to a baby gift left on a table, Peggy bore in, “I look at you and I think, ‘I want what he has.’ . . . You have everything. And so much of it.”

As Peggy sat there, letting her words about the stark contrast between their lives linger in the air, Don invoked a classic Don line which he uses when he’s cornered, “What do you want me to say?”

Peggy called him on it. “I don’t think I could’ve been any clearer,” she said. She got up, went to leave and, with her hand still on the doorknob turned to Don and said, “What if this is my time?” He had no response.

Other episode tidbits:

-- The Civil Rights movement is seeping more and more into the white washed world of Mad Men. Betty’s daughter was talking about a slain Civil Rights leader while Pete was getting taken to the woodshed by Sterling Cooper’s bosses for suggesting to a client that they target their product to a growing African-American market. Pete’s uncomfortable conversation with Hollis, the elevator operator, made the tensions clear when Hollis pointed out that he’s "Hollis," but Pete is “Mr. Campbell.”

-- I wish I had the chutzpah to pull a move like Don did when Lane was grilling members of his Creative Department about why they spent so much money on pens and pencils. Don just got up and left the room. And no one stopped him or said a word.

-- Obviously the story with Sally’s teacher, Miss Farrell, isn’t over. A few episodes ago, Don watched with great interest as she danced around the Maypole. Then she called the Draper home to apologize for an earlier conference where Miss Farrell had questioned why Betty and Don hadn’t taken Sally out of school when her grandfather died. Where this will go, I’m uncertain.

By the way, what was with the Sally-as-William-Wallace/Braveheart snippet, wiping the blood on her cheek while Miss Farrell was talking about the incident at the water cooler?

-- One thing that was bugging me: What was the song that was played during Betty’s vision when she was holding the caterpillar and then at the end of the episode, when Betty went to fetch her crying newborn?

What were your thoughts on “The Fog?”

UPDATE: There's some fantastic discussion in the comments section about Betty's childbirth experience going on over at the Basket of Kisses. Be sure to check it out.

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' Monday: My Old Kentucky Home

When the credits rolled on the latest episode of Mad Men, I felt kind of, well, disappointed. Unlike most episodes, I couldn’t pinpoint a unifying theme. At least not right away. Sure, there were two parties – Roger and Jane’s horrifically awkward old time Kentucky-themed soiree at a country club, and a business-oriented dinner party at Joan and Greg’s. There was a small working pot “party” with some of Sterling Cooper’s underlings when they had to work on a Saturday.

Then there were the other assorted bits of oddness, Betty’s flirtation with the New York governor’s touchy staffer who, upon seeing her standing outside the ladies' room, opened with the line, “I wish you were waiting for me,” and then moved in to touch her belly in a lascivious fashion. And the stolen $5. Am I the only one who was just waiting for Grandpa Gene to take out a belt and beat the light-fingered Sally? (There was a distinctive darkness hovering around Gene, who had Sally read him The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of all things.)

Put together, the disparate stories seemed like a hodgepodge of disconnected threads. How did they fit together? Maybe they didn't.

I toyed with the notion that the episode was about places in life as embodied by Peggy’s statement, “I’m in a very good place right now,” despite later being on the receiving end of a patronizing, chiding from her secretary after Peggy insisted that she be included with the creative guys who were smoking pot.

Maybe it was all about places.

Roger and Jane are in a self-contained bubble, pretending to ignore the scorn aimed their way, particularly during their very uncomfortable gathering (the blackface was painful), which Don called “work disguised as a party.”

Betty’s in the world of gestation -- no longer riding horses as she loved last season -- and flirting with a stranger while she looks resplendent in white lace, and later necked with her husband at the edge of a party in the shadows of some trees.

Joan is uneasily morphing into a supporting housewife role – seemingly alien to her -- being placed in a situation by her husband to be his performing monkey in order to up his standing with his bosses. (I hate Greg for the rape scene last year and cannot help but think of him as a domineering, controlling spouse who pressured Joan into performing in front of their company. Did ya catch the uncomfortable look she gave to Greg while she was singing?) Joan's usually the one who sets the agenda and makes the orders, at least at Sterling Cooper. That is, as long as she remains in the secretarial arena.

Gene, a veteran and a former business man, is in a place which is also foreign to him: Bunking in a spare room at the home of his daughter and despised son-in-law, he's been placed under their protective care and the watchful eyes of their housekeeper Carla. Gene is reduced to running around the house, where he’s just a guest, raging that someone had stolen money from him, helpless and confused.

Don -- on whom I can’t get a read this season -- seems to be crawling inside his own skin. He wanted to leave the Roger-Jane fete before he even arrived but stayed because of his obligations to his wife and to Roger. Don was gentlemanly and even affectionate to his wife in attending to her, passionately kissing her -- playing the role of the good husband – after seeing Roger and Jane slow dancing. I wonder if his heart is in the same place as Betty’s when it comes to their marriage?

So maybe there was a unifying theme in “My Old Kentucky Home” after all.

Key/interesting moments and quotes:

-- The Jane/Joan showdown in Sterling Cooper. After a very prickly exchange filled with silences that just hung there, particularly after someone called Jane “Mrs. Sterling,” Jane and her hat told Joan, “Roger is having my rings re-sized. I keep losing weight.” Then she scrunched up her nose in the full-figured Joan’s face.

-- Peggy’s take-down of her secretary Olive’s criticism of her for smoking pot with Kinsey and Smitty was great. After Olive chastised Peggy for leaving her purse unattended in her office and for doing weed (something I cannot imagine her doing to a male boss), Peggy gave this soliloquy:

“I have my own office with my name on the door. And I have a secretary. That’s you. And I am not scared of any of this. But you’re scared. Oh, my God. You’re scared. Don’t worry about me. I am going to get to do everything you want for me. I am going to be fine Olive. I really am.”

-- Pete and Trudy. Oh my God. Pete and Trudy. Doing that dance. Reminded me of George Bailey and Mary Hatch dancing at the Bedford High graduation party on the gym floor that opened up to a swimming pool.

-- Don to Roger, “No one thinks you’re happy. They think you’re foolish.”

What did you think of “My Old Kentucky Home?”

Image credit: AMC.