So, I was writing about Marriage of Figaro, and I got what? 3 posts? And then I saw the same complexity everywhere: Every episode is a mini-movie, self-contained, with a clear motif expressed by the title. A motif that has echoes and parallels throughout the script, so that the interplay of language and image creates a poem about that episode’s subject matter.
Heady stuff. Phew.
So I thought, okay, I’ll just look at titles. Not every title is as fascinating as every other, but there’s a lot of meat.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
The obvious take is that it’s about the tobacco ad, and for a pilot, it’s a nice title because it sets the era (not really, the song is from 1933, but it “sends you back;” letting you know it’s a period piece). Almost as obviously, your vision is obscured; what you see is not what you think you see.
Ladies Room
There’s a lot going on with this one. A lot. Weiner has talked about how it seems there’s always a woman crying in the ladies room in every office. Everywhere. And y’know, I’ve seen that, I get that. But that’s a superficial definition.
First, there are ladies rooms, as in bathrooms. These are places where women have privacy. It’s a man’s world and this is where women hide. At work, women cry there. In a restaurant, Betty’s hands go numb there, but it is also in the restaurant’s ladies room that Betty can first confess that she mourns her mother. In the ladies room, Betty admits weakness, while in a different ladies room, Peggy refuses to be weak.
In a larger sense, this episode is about the rooms we shove women into. The ladies room is the bathroom, sure, but it’s also confinement, imprisonment. Betty’s “room” is “housewife,” and Peggy’s is “secretary,” and Peggy’s is also “sexual prey.” Helen moves in, and she has one foot out of the prison door, and that creates anxiety. “Divorced” is a bad room.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s in a ladies room that we get a peek at the lives of African American women, who are in a much smaller and more confined room.
Marriage of Figaro
Everything is about marriage, happy and unhappy. We hear about a honeymoon and we see adultery. Divorce is gawked at like a carnival sideshow. Two (two!) anti-marriage jokes are told. Harry and Pete have a conversation about how to be husbands, Don confesses to Rachel that he’s married, and then the Draper’s house is full of married couples. Marriage is all that’s on anyone’s mind.
Five G
I’ve been fascinated with this one for a long time. Adam’s room number. But also the secret in Don’s briefcase. In the director’s commentary for this episode, Lesli Linka Glatter points out that the title is obscure; you don’t know what it means, which is fitting in an episode about keeping secrets. Don’s secret identity, Ken’s secret life as a writer, the “Executive Bank Account,” and Peggy’s discovery that the word “secretary” has “secret” (as in “keeper of”) built right in. What does “5G” mean? I’t s a secret.
Babylon
I did a whole post on the meaning of this word, so I’m just referring you to it. Of everything I’ve written on this blog, it may be my favorite post.
Red in the Face
My least favorite episode, but it is consistently about shame. Roger should be ashamed of himself, but instead it is Betty who is shamed; still, Don manages to shame Roger. Meanwhile, Trudy shames Pete and Helen tells Betty she “should be ashamed” of herself. Betty responds by publically shaming Helen.
The Hobo Code
The episode is all about coded information; about isolated groups of people speaking to each other through code. That’s why this is the episode where Sal and Elliot have dinner; because by mentioning decor and show tunes they are signalling each other. Lois also signals Sal, in a more conventional way, but hers are not “hobo” codes, they are “normal” and acceptable.
The Belle Jolie ad campaign is also a kind of code; “marking your man” is code for the relationship.
But the true code is the hobo code, and the purest relationship in the episode is the one between Bowl Cut Dick (BCD) and the unnamed hobo. The hobo teaches BCD to be unattached to harmful people, that the ability to pick up and leave is vital, and makes him an “honorary” hobo. All of this has a long-term effect on Dick; he then teaches BCD some code.
Immediately after, we see Don able to read the “code” in the Polaroid and know that Midge and Roy are in love, and then send “code” to the cop, in the form of his suit and hat, allowing him to safetly leave the apartment.
In the end, we see that Archie’s front post is marked with the code for a dishonest man, and that Dick Whitman’s office door is marked with the name “Don Draper,” another code for a dishonest man.
Shoot
This is perhaps less subtle as a title, although it’s a great, great episode. In fact, when Roberta and I were tossing around ideas for naming a blog, the two I thought of were “Basket of Kisses” and “Shooting Pigeons.” I actually liked Shooting Pigeons better, but no one else did, and now I’m glad we’re the Basket.
Photo shoot. Shooting pigeons. “Shoot” for it, as in take a chance. And then…fail. Roger says he’s afraid of failing and would rather not try. Betty longs to try, but cannot handle being shot down by McCann-Erickson.
25 Responses to “The echoes of episode titles”
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Yeah, not sure I could get behind Shooting at Pigeons — too much explaining to do. And PETA would be all over us.
Good post. You made me see things I hadn't noticed before. In general, I get the titles, but sometimes there are missed layers.
Really nice.
Remember when AMC started the second run, only they showed the pilot and then skipped to the 4th episode? The day that Ladies Room was supposed to (but did not) air, I saw a co-worker crying in the bathroom. And there is another young woman here who I am told cries in there once a day.
I completly missed the connection between Sal and Elliot during dinner, and the fact that it occurs during The Hobo Code. I could have smacked myself for missing it. Thanks for pointing this stuff out. I can't wait to read the post that covers the rest of the titles. Keep up the great work.
I went through a very depressed period in my life, and I used to cry in the ladies room every day, for lunch.
RE: Shoot – I watched this with my husband last night. It's hard watching things with him, because he always figures out where the story is going. He predicted Betty was going to shoot pigeons when he saw her sitting and smoking in the kitchen. He says he wishes he could write as well as he analyzes writing.
And there is another young woman here who I am told cries in there once a day.
Like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News.
Ret, I wasn't planning on doing the rest of the season 1 titles. I did 8 out of 13; the other five were less intriguing to me.
Yes exactly like that.
Or, almost exactly. It's not first thing in the morning, before her day starts. It's not as methodical.
I understand. The work you did was amazing. I look forward to your insights as season approaches.
What a great post! Just the idea of an episode called "Hobo Code" is amazing to me – and of course they nailed it!
However I did miss reading your analysis of 'New Amsterdam' … seems a natural.
" Weiner has talked about how it seems there’s always a woman crying in the ladies room in every office."
– In my office, ladies cry in the ladies room into their cell phones to some poor friend of theirs. The men cry in their cars in the parking lot where they think no one can see them.
I agree with your points on Ladies room. An additional comment to the "room" that women are shoved into, its very true, because isn't it another stereotype that "women always go to the washroom together". So women cry there, group there, etc. As much as it's this place of privacy or seclusion, i think another aspect is that the "ladies room" is a big mystery to men. Men always wonder what goes on in there? Just like women are a big mystery to men (and vice versa) back in 1960. And even today!
haha.
As far as the Marriage of Figaro, i find it ironic that the whole episode is about marriage as this serious thing. Causing a range of distressing, and powerful emotions among the characters. When the actual play The Marriage of Figaro, is a comedy.
Cool interpretation though! And no matter how many times i read it, everytime i see "BCD" (bowl cut dick), i just picture that poor kids face in my head, and chuckle to myself.
Well, Coop, off the top of my head, I'm guessing they're pointing at old money. You know—the Dutch money that built New York back when it was New Amsterdam. But I don't know.
I don't know if anyone here has heard of the paper in Seattle, The Stranger, but I read it regularly, and on their blog one of the writers said he has seen the first six episodes of Mad Men and claims that nothing happens. I remember upon my first viewing of the series that it did start of a bit slow…or maybe slower than other series (which I think is Matthew Weiner's intension – he does not want to give the viewer everything right away). Did anyone else, aside from myself, and this Stranger blogger, find that the series did not really pick up steam until say, 5G/Babylon?
Simone, I was just reading this and commented on it. I've been analyzing the episodes armed with minimal knowledge of Viennese intellectual history and haven't gotten bored yet. You do need to watch each episode a lot to pick up on things, and watching them out of order is pretty rewarding after you've done that.
I was just starting work on 'Ladies Room' and I like the interpretation here. I was looking at it in light of Freud's work on hysteria and focusing on the conversation between Roger and Don about psychology. There's a lot of great thought about language and what silence says in therapy, and every scene with women in the restrooms seems to depict different faces of what occurs in the care of a traditional analyst.
Simone, the pace of the show is slow and not action oriented, but I think this refers to something else.
A few months back I wrote a post called '9 months for Don', in which I discuss this idea.
It is an important and interesting distinction to make in storytelling, something being exposed to the audience, vs. any actual action. And the more subtle… something being revealed to other characters. SEASON ONE SPOILER STARTS NOW. Betty figuring it out about Don's affairs; that's big. But aside from telling Dr. Wayne, there is no real action. She doesn't leave Don or track down Midge. She just absorbs. END SPOILER. And we love this about the show; it is a much more realistic reaction… to do nothing.
In that post I detail the things that do happen to Don, actually happen, as opposed to things that we, the audience learn about him. Some of those things are, of course, simply his finding out about things, but they do affect him.
My plan, ftr, is to do a sequel called '9 months for Everyone'. I will get that posted prior to S2.
"Betty figuring it out about Don’s affairs; that’s big. But aside from telling Dr. Wayne, there is no real action. She doesn’t leave Don or track down Midge. She just absorbs."
That's a great point, Roberta. The absorption and processing of the information is as important as the reveal. It's what propels the characters forward.
On a lighter note, I so want to see the Betty/Midge confrontation. Who would give whom the smackdown in that one? LOL.
We've seen very little confrontation. These are restrained people. Pete and Trudy have fought, and Don and Betty had the one fight about Roger's pass, but mostly, these people seethe and don't confront.
Which is why the Betty/Helen slap was so amazing.
Btw in the commentary January Jones said she had better slaps and was disappointed they used that lame one.
On that note, I've not heard anyone reference Betty's line in RiTF about "bouncing me off the walls." Does anyone think she might be referring to an incident in the past?
The line seemed to be very loaded …
I had posted about it in the episode thread. I thought it was interesting that she didn't back down or cower from Don's aggressiveness a bit in the light of the fact that she can be pretty passive in other areas. I didn't get a spousal abuse vibe or anything.
Missed that, Jackie – thx.
I know you wrote that you didn't plan on doing all the titles.
I happen to find "New Amsterdam" to be pretty interesting though.
Starting with the obvious, New Amsterdam is what New York used to be called – so right away, we have an evocation of the past, which is apparent in the back story of Pete Campbell, and how he comes from a long line of "important" (read: wealthy) New Yorkers. So it becomes about the conflict between the past and the present (which exists throughout the series), and the relationship between different generations.
Pete feels like a failure for not being able to live up to the family name that was such a big deal before he was even born – he screws up at work and almost gets fired, he's disgusted that he has to rely on his wife's family to pay for the apartment.
Then there's the great final shots of Pete looking at his new family and new neighbors with slight disgust, then staring out the window at the New York skyline.
There might be more, but I'd need to re-watch the episode.
Things are changing, and they aren't the way they used to be. Another theme of the series.
See, Ihavesmoke? I don't have to do every episode, because Basketcases like you do such a great job!
great post but i cant help but think weiner has got his great episode titles from working on the sopranos. I might sound like i harp on about that show but they have great ep titles that refer to little things in the show that can also be interpreted in different ways
"Red in the Face" is one of my favorite episodes. I think the title evokes shame, yes, but also anger. That episode is all about masculinity, how it gets constructed, reinforced, torn down, and rebuilt. How tenuous and artificial it is, and how much mental and physical effort men exert in shoring up their own and challenging that of other men. Don's take-down of Roger is, well, masterful.
Harry, Weiner always acknowledges David Chase as an influence and mentor, but he was also Exec. Producer on Sopranos for five of its seven years, so when you say he "got his great episode titles from working on the Sopranos" I think you may have it backwards. I think he wrote many of those great episode titles. It takes nothing away from Mad Men or Weiner to acknowledge he was a great writer before this show.
And let's not forget that Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, complete with its evocative title, was written before The Sopranos existed.
Inanna, interesting thoughts.
I really like the shot at the end of New Amsterdam. It seems that Pete is thinking, "Someday, I'm going to own this town." He wants to get ahead, and he knows he can.