Basket of Kisses

In extremis – the place beyond the breaking point, the ultimate unhappy destination – is not the part of the psyche anyone wants to visit.  But in Season One’s Long Weekend, Roger has no choice.  He has to go.

Roger doesn’t expect it, not at the end of another day of playtime.  He’s drunk his usual weight in those clear liquors he favors, asked Joanie to join him for the Labor Day weekend, suffered an icy rejection, trawled Casting for her replacement, ridden one of the twins around for a while, stared into her “translucent” skin …

And now?  The fun abruptly over, Roger finds himself staring into something very different.

He doesn’t like what he sees.  We get a hint of this when a bedridden Roger asks Don about “energy”.

“Human energy,” he tries:  he means the soul.  Don, who happened to be on the other side of the office door when Roger’s heart seized up, is clearly the wrong guy to ask.  “What do you want to hear,” Don says, unhappy with this territory himself.

Roger’s afraid of dying, sure.  His fear leads him to cling to his love for Mona and Margaret.  But he’s also angry:  at his own weak heart, at having been told to do certain things, for years — drink the milk, eat the butter.  Now that he’s done them, he learns too late that they were all the wrong things.

Joan, Carol, Betty and Don all experience unhappy discoveries in this episode – but Don, by virtue of his proximity to Roger, is the other casualty of that bad night.  Roger’s swing close to death sends Don to his own extreme, and to Rachel Menken’s door.

“This is it,” he tells her.  “This is all there is.  And I feel like it’s slipping through my fingers like a handful of sand.”

It’s a hell of a pitch.  It’s Don at his best — and worst.  Which may end up being closer to the same thing than I ever considered, when I first started watching this show.

In extremis, we can lose what we believe, more fully embrace it, or go off the rails.  I think I know what Roger believes at the end of Long Weekend, whether it stays with him or not.  But what Don believes is both simpler and much darker than I realized, two years ago.  “The universe is indifferent”:  he really believes that.

What won’t a person who believes such a thing do?

I wake up in the morning, and I look into Trudy’s eyes, and I think ‘We’re supposed to be one person,’ but whatever I try—all these things going on in my head—she’s just another stranger.

I moved this month. New apartment, new city, and even though it’s only about half an hour from where I was, it is a very different lifestyle. Now, I was born in 1965. Grew up in the “me” generation, and then the “me, Al Franken” decade (I can’t be the only one who remembers this). I am introspective by nature, but consider this category of awarenesses that started or expanded after the 60s–encounter groups, EST, therapy, 12-step, self-help books—this was seeping into the culture, and it all colored my thinking. And now, as I get older, I just get more self-aware. Point is, this move has been quite jarring and stressful, and I’ve been very conscious of that and attentive to it. Please realize that it was a great move; every change is for the better. I’m thrilled that I’ve taken these steps. But it took a few weeks before I even started to feel like my own bed was my own bed. The whole thing threw me into shock.

So with that in mind, imagine being a newlywed in 1960. Suddenly your whole life is different–it’s like playing house, only it’s not a game and it’s hard. Someone is in your bed, someone is sharing your meals, someone is in your bathroom. Someone who, as is so terribly evidenced all through the first season of Mad Men, maybe you don’t really know so well.

By the time we get to Hobo Code, Pete is worn down by all of this, and terribly disappointed. And now he is moving again, today, into an apartment beyond his means, for which he has endured more than one humiliation (rejection from his own father, help from Trudy’s, Trudy’s bulldozing her will about this). Pete is braced for a bad day.

So that’s Part One of my ah-hah.

And then there’s Peggy; (more…)

I have always loved this exchange from New Amsterdam:

Roger Sterling: I bet there were people in the Bible, walking around complaining about kids today.
Don Draper: Kids today, they’ve got no one to look up to. ‘Cause they’re looking up to us.

This week, a blog I enjoy posted evidence that Roger was right:

When I was a boy, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.
–Hesiod, ~ 800 BC

(Click through for more.)

As far as I’m concerned, as long as men look at me that way, I’m earning my keep.  Then every once in a while I think,  ‘No. This is something else. I don’t want my husband to see this.’

– Betty Draper, Red in the Face

Red in the Face is a wooden rollercoaster of an episode.  Its heights are terrific, but the gravity messes with us.  It feels jarring and blunt.  I found it unpleasant to watch the first time, but I notice something different now.

We get to see people at the height of hubris and its opposite depth.  Shamed:  what Milan Kundera describes as “the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter.”

Red in the Face does the opposite of what My Old Kentucky Home and Nixon vs. Kennedy do:  key characters appear through their own words and actions, without disguises, feints, or flashbacks.  The light on them is not kind.

And what do we see?

Betty: Impulsive and quick to anger, Betty Draper proves that she isn’t “a marshmallow”.  In Red in the Face, Betty blocks Roger’s pass and dares Don to do something about it.  Later, she slaps Helen Bishop in the supermarket.  When she speaks of this to Francine, it’s not the whole story — and it’s after a glass or two of wine.

Roger: Self-indulgent, married but bored, Roger has everything and wants none of it – except perhaps to see it all dissolve back into what it used to be.  He escapes as often as he can, to drinking or Joan, when she lets him.  Even when he gets himself in trouble Don and Betty, he can’t put together a decent apology (“… At some point, we’ve all parked in the wrong garage”).  Later, he pays for this.  Dearly.

Pete: The newlywed can’t hang out with the boys:  he has a wedding gift to return.  Mocked in the office, Pete still can’t get what he wants (respect, attention or money) by returning the gift to the store, so he buys himself a gun.  Later, chastened, he tells his favorite office friend a hunting fantasy.

As for that office friend:

Peggy: The hardest working person at Sterling Cooper, now pulling the 1960’s equivalent of double shifts, gets interested in Pete’s stories.  One, to be exact.  “That would be wonderful,” Peggy says after she hears his hunting fantasy … and then the first of her cravings hit, with all the subtlety of a crosstown bus.

Don: The alpha male of Sterling Cooper is not on his best behavior.  Don is by turns furtive (with Dr. Wayne), weak (with a half-lit Roger), angry (after catching Roger and Betty in the kitchen), vengeful (with Betty at home the next day, with Roger in the office after the Martini lunch) and finally just mean — blaming his wife for another man’s pass at her, leading Roger to physical disaster.

After Red in the Face, Season One sped up – the Whitman Sampler arrived at Sterling Cooper, Pete swiped it, Peggy’s weight gain and Roger’s health problems accelerated, Joan and Roger’s affair receded underground, Betty went coolly medieval on Don by way of her shrink, and we all caught a glimpse of “places we ache to go again”.

But first, we got a clear a view of who each of these people are.  Two years ago, we first saw rage (and chemistry) between Don and Betty.  We understood that Roger would leave Mona.  We watched Betty touch her power.  We saw something selfish and needy – as well as a couple of sharp perceptions – in Pete.  We knew that Peggy was more likely to listen to someone else than to a still, small voice from inside.

And we received incontrovertible evidence of who Don Draper can be:  Not a nice guy.  The kind of man who can get angry and stay that way, giving no hint of it, until he has exacted the revenge he seeks.

I’m someone who believes change is possible for everyone.  But what we got in Red In the Face were the building blocks of the characters we know.  Over time, they have stayed remarkably true.

I mentioned the other day that due to my just having moved and the disorganization that I bring to that situation, I can’t find my DVD player. And due to the sputtering death of my motherboard resulting in the purchase of a netbook, I am disk drive free. But being as I do co-author this site, it is my responsibility to watch Mad Men. Plus okay, I was jones-ing. So I hit up on-demand, which is showing selected episodes from Season One.

I watched Babylon.

First of all I want to say again that this is as fine an episode of television as has ever been created. Each frame is perfection. If you’d like a quick reminder, check out Deb’s recap for a scene-by-scene refresher course. No I mean now, I’ll wait.

Right?

Okay but second of all, watching the scene of Roger and Joan in the hotel room was a revelation. And you know, it should be. They all should be, in what we can now comfortably refer to as retrospect. But–I mean, we all know that looking at a scene of Peggy in the first season will be remarkable. And it surely is. But this? It was more surprising, because while we’ve seen each of their circumstances change so vibrantly, you would not particularly say that either one of them has really changed as a person; not much, anyway.

But oh my, this scene. Now, I have never been on the Joan-and-Roger-are-each-others-true-loves streetcar, and this has not changed that, but they certainly were a delicious couple. A reminder that this was the single scene of the two of them together in this way. And holy crap was it sexy. One of the juiciest sexiest scenes on Mad Men, or anywhere in the history of sexy scenes. And also, they were so terrifically comfortable together. Applause to these two actors who moved around each other like they’d been doing so for a year. Watching the scene, I was genuinely moved by Joan–because she was entirely at ease; in her element. We have not seen her this way since, with the exception of diving into all those television scripts in A Night to Remember. And in that hotel room, it wasn’t that she was 100% happy–the little slap she gave Roger when he alluded to the notion of leaving his wife, the wall she maintained as a guard to her own life–but what she was? Entirely, exuberantly full of life. As was Roger.

Come to think of it, we have seen it since in each of them. At the end of Shut the Door. Have a Seat.

On the subject of language echoes…

Red in the Face: Don gets stuck bringing Roger home for dinner. Betty is concerned there won’t be enough food. “Bets, what do you want me to say?

Long Weekend: Don to Roger when Roger’s in the hospital, “What do you want to hear?”

Roger to Don, For Those Who Think Young: “What do you want me to say?”

Don to Carlton, in Flight One: “What do you want to hear?”

Don and Betty fighting, also in Flight One, Don says “What do you want me to say?”

Three Sundays: Don to Betty about their fight over Bobby, “What do you want to hear?”

Maidenform: Don to Duck, during their “lunch” meeting, “What do you want me to say?”

A Night to Remember, Don to Betty: “What do you want?”

The Inheritance, Don to Betty: “What do you want me to say? I want to be here. You need me here.”

Wee Small Hours, Don to Suzanne: “What do you want me to say?”

The meaning in Don’s mannerism, I think, ultimately it comes down to The New Girl:
Don: “What do they want you to do?”
Peggy: “I don’t know.”
Don: “Yes you do. Find out what they want you to do and do it.”

That’s Don’s philosophy, maybe more than “this never happened.” Don’s entire survival is keyed on “Find out what they want you to do and do it.”

But it’s a trap, and Peggy sees it. She sees its limitations:

The Fog: Don to Peggy: “What do you want me to say?”
Peggy: “I don’t think I could have been any clearer.”

She’s saying, ’stop asking the question and provide the answer.’ She’s saying, ‘I’ve seen this play, I know how it ends; what else have you got?’

Can Don change? Maybe:

The Gypsy and the Hobo, Don to Betty: “Where do you want me to start?”

That’s a profound shift; from asking the listener to shape the message, to saying that he’s going to tell his own story, deliver his own message, and just wants to know where to start.

(I should thank the insane Aaron Cohen of Unlikely Words, whose compilations of Everything Don Draper Said allowed me to double check my own compilation of every time Don Draper said these things in particular.)

We’re gonna backtrack a little here and do some Not-So-Live-Blogging of earlier episodes.  We started doing these at the beginning of S2, so it will be fun (let’s hope) to go back to fill in the blanks and get some BoK perspective going on the oldies-but-goodies.

Definitely cheating by starting with Numero Uno on my own personal Top 10 – two years running – but why not start at the top?

At this point in S1, we know a little about Dick Whitman, Adam, and Don’s dingy roots.  We know about Joan and Roger, and both their tickers were still working.  Midge is still in the picture, but we’re about to see Don’s first kiss-off.

Pete and Peggy have shared the lovers’ embrace but once … “it is the East, and Margaret is the sun!”

Alright, popcorn’s hot, previews are done, we’re ready to roll …

PETE’S OFFICE

He’s horny.  She’s vulnerable.  Sparks fly.  That pony-tail pull really resonates, don’t it?

“Listen.  Maybe this isn’t the right time to mention this, but …” Can you choose poorer words right after sex?

“I wake up in the morning, and I look into Trudy’s eyes, and I think ‘We’re supposed to be one person.’  But whatever I try and … These things going on in my head.  She’s just another stranger.”

“Pete, you’re not alone in this.”

I think two things when I watch this exchange:

a)      This is why everyone thinks/thought that Pete and Peggy will always be star-crossed lovers, or be always a furtive glance away from getting it on; and

b)      Pete and Trudy have done a brilliant 180 from this point.  I’m not forgetting about the the Uh-Au Pair … a dog is a dog, and Pete’s a dog.  But emotionally, it’s all changed.  Pete would never say this line of dialog in Season 3.  He might be wookin’ pa nub with the neighbor’s babysitter, but he’s no longer this confused soul calling his wife a stranger.

MW has said often (esp during S3-related interviews) that he wants viewers who watch earlier seasons to say “Who are those people?  They’re so different from the way the characters on the show are now,” because that’s how real life is.  I think this is an excellent example of that.

She grabs an empty folder – always thinking, that Peggy.

“Sorry I ripped your blouse.”

“It’s okay.”  That’s sexy.

(more…)

Canadians are in luck. There’s a Mad Men marathon this weekend!

The best reason to stay indoors this weekend is the opportunity to revisit the entire first season of Mad Men (Bravo!, episodes 1-7, Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; episodes 8-13, Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.).

You just assume I’ll do whatever you say. Just follow you like some nervous poodle.

Peggy Olson, Shut the Door. Have a Seat.

It was like watching a dog play the piano.

Freddie Rumson [about Peggy Olson], Babylon

I honestly wonder if this too was not deliberate, these bookends. Way back in Season One, in the episode in which Peggy Olson became a writer, in the moment that gave us Basket of Kisses, this most horrid and degrading statement was made about Peggy.

And here she is, all growed up. Living in Manhattan, sleeping with a powerful older man and feeling no attachments herself, and drawing the line in the sand with Don Draper.

So is it a coincidence that the writers chose to have her echo this–hurling the insult at herself, the most degrading image she could think up, which just happened to be a dog?

I love this show.

Thirty-nine is the new 26. Eps, that is.

Time to take stock, reevaluate, ruminate and marinate.  I was tempted to make it a Top 15 or something, on account of there being, you know, so many good episodes.  But 10 it shall remain.

Some are up, some are down … some just are. Up?  How could an episode rise on the list when new episodes compete for real estate?  Well, some play better a year later.

Overall, this reflects my bias toward Season 1 episodes.  Season 3, with 4 entries in the Top 10, had in some ways a greater number of superior episodes, but less interesting plots.

Without further ado …

#10 – The Jet Set (last year: not ranked)

Some of us (okay probably just me) didn’t realize how important this episode was until way after it aired.  It sets the stage for so much, with payoffs coming way down the line (even in Love Among the Ruins).  What seemed at the time like Don’s jaunt in sunny SoCal was really a reawakening leading him to visit Anna and begin to take stock.  Without this, he probably doesn’t consider starting a new agency.  Plus, that house … jeez.

#9 – The Color Blue (last year: not ranked)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer

This is what I think of, looking back on this episode.  Betty’s state of mind is slowly unraveling.  Her faith in Don, already shot and covered over with Gene’s birth, is evaporating with every passing second.  And that’s before she opens his secret drawer.  The Waldorf scene alone makes this a keeper.

#8 – Mountain King (last year: #8)

Anna Draper still packs a punch.  Coming on the heels of Don’s Cali-vanting, Anna grounds him and washes him with security and love.  In other news, Joan’s rape continues to reverberate.

(more…)