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?

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.

Something happened to Lane Pryce in season 3.  The “limey bastard”, who once caught the blame for canning Bert Petersen and complained of New York City’s lack of proper pubs, crossed a great distance in a short time.  He started as the tea-drinking head of the redcoats; later he offered his former colleagues coffee, balked at a slow-track move to India, and ended a bloody day at the office buying sodas from a vending machine, discussing Tom Sawyer with Don.

Still later, he joined Don in office mutiny.  Like Don himself, Lane had become an American.

Part of the fun of being American is that it’s something so many people become. For men like Lane and my British father, the causes include accidents:  of fate, timing or planning.  He and my father didn’t mean to end up on these barbaric shores in the 1960s.  But land they did, and now they don’t want to go back.

If you asked Pete Campbell his American story, he’d start with the Dyckmans, wind his way through his father’s contempt for advertising, and end with the new agency.  If you asked Roger, the story would be short, funny, and touch on the war, money and work.

I wonder what Hollis would say.  I really do.

Lane’s evolution has been disarming.  After seeing Pete Campbell raked over the coals over his Admiral television ad suggestion, Lane gently observed that “something is going on”.  He positioned himself as an outsider in saying so – “I’m a stranger in a strange land” – but Roger and Bert clearly heard him.

All along, we’ve seen Lane dealing with the new in surprising ways.  When Don suggested he “get his hands dirty” – a very American comment – Lane seemed heartened by the idea.  And months before he told his employer’s secrets, he read the native literature:  Tom Sawyer.

A true adventure story, Tom Sawyer follows children as they repeatedly get away from the worrying, rule-bound adults in their lives to hunt for treasure in wild, abandoned, or hidden places.  It’s a frontier story, a dazzle of what-ifs and now-whats.

To read Tom Sawyer is to enter the minds of the young people who inhabit it.  You emerge a little different, scuffed up yourself, ready for the rough advantages of freedom.  Was it a surprise that Lane too found these advantages, so soon after reading the book?

I think that bloody day in the office – July 3, 1963 – was Lane’s American moment.  He acknowledged the chaos in his new home… and yet he knew that he wanted to stay.  He may even have wanted to stay because of the chaos.  Like Huck Finn, Lane might have suddenly found that the Old World’s ways and customs ain’t for him.

What about you, Stateside Basketcases?  What was your American moment?  If you came here from somewhere else, when did you know you would stay?  If you’re from here, what about this maddening, argumentative, noisy, big-hearted place tells (or told) you that you’re home?

During the dog food focus group Sterling Cooper stages for Caldecott Farms in The Gypsy and the Hobo, Peggy says an interesting thing.  When asked why the man conducting the interviews with the test subjects isn’t wearing a lab coat, she states that dogs “don’t like uniforms.”

There had to be some other significance to the remark.  I’m sure that Peggy wasn’t citing a real 1960’s study which demonstrated that canines had an adverse reaction to uniforms.  Okay, maybe she was.  But it seems like more than a passing remark.

Following Peggy’s comment, there’s a quick exchange between Don and Smitty which establishes that, when describing some object (in this case their dog), people in focus groups are really describing themselves.  So, in effect Peggy was saying that people don’t like uniforms.

This could refer to to Don and Roger.  Outwardly, they both seem proud of their military experience.  But Don only signed up to get away from an unhappy home and bailed the first chance he got.  And, according to Annabelle Mathis, Roger was in the process of finding himself when the war forced him into another direction.  So, one could argue that neither of them TRULY liked their uniforms. 

Read a different way, this may be foreshadowing of what will soon be the general rejection by protesters over the “establishment.” One of the focus group participants even says “when people protest, I’m on board.”  Often, that unrest took the form of railing against those in uniform such as soldiers and the police.  In Mad Men’s universe, these events will soon be televised nightly into everyone’s living rooms.  Many will react like Don at the Caldecott Farms focus group and just want someone to turn the damn thing off.

Roger’s greatest hits from episodes 301-312, courtesy of New York magazine.

1998’s Who moved my cheese?, by Spencer Johnson, stresses the importance of being prepared for the inevitable changes that are going to occur in the workplace.

The book is told as an allegory featuring two mice, “Sniff” and “Scurry,” and two tiny humans, “Hem” and “Haw.” The maze they live in is a microcosm for all places of employment and they spend their time searching for happiness and success as represented by cheese. Only Sniff and Scurry notice when the cheese supply in their small area of the maze begins to dwindle and they take proactive steps to find a new source. On the other hand, Hem and Haw, as their names suggest, are oblivious to the shrinking cheese supply and taken by surprise when it’s totally exhausted. Their initial response is only to complain about the ”unfairness” of the situation. By the time they try to find other sources of cheese, it’s too late.

There’s seems to be a bit of this going on in Shut the Door. Have a Seat. Ever since PPL took over Sterling Cooper and began downsizing it, the amount of “cheese” available for executives like Don, Peggy, Pete, Harry and Paul has been getting smaller. This indeed has been the topic of many a bitch session in Season 3. Don thought he had found a rich new supply in Conrad Hilton. I realize this is a stretch, but I love the irony of Hilton’s association with the moon and the old myth about it being made of green cheese. The McCann Erickson acquisition is the last straw. The cheese supply looks like it was about to be totally removed. Don’s reaction, like Hem and Haw, is to rail at the less then sympathetic Hilton.

After venting his spleen, Don is inspired to start the coup with Bert, Roger and Pryce which results in the creation of Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce. As the newly assembled team leaves their old office, one of the boxes they carry out with them is clearly labeled “Velveeta.”  The McCann deal moved their cheese.  So, they decided to take it back.

Lane Pryce: Hello Don.
Don Draper: How was your morning?
Lane Pryce: Very productive.

I have been struggling this season. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved this season, it has been my favorite so far, and that is to be a separate post. But I have been struggling to understand what is going on with Don at work.

Genuinely confused. I just couldn’t get a handle on where he was at. He was being downright nasty to his group, he was following Conrad Hilton like a child trailing the Pied Piper, he wanted nothing to do with Roger. I kept thinking I was missing something, some over-arching blueprint of this dynamic, something obvious that everyone else saw (and not for nothing but I’m supposed to be good at this show), some big cause and a diagnosis of its effect. But I couldn’t.

I even asked Rich Sommer about it: (more…)

Welcome IMDb visitors! We’re the first, best, and most delicious Mad Men fansite. Things you might want to see here include: our character and cultural Bible, speculation on who stays and who goes in season 4, and a comparison of Mad Men to Marnie.

Jon and I spoke last Tuesday, November 3rd. He is fascinating to speak with; he is so intimate with this character in a way that is hard to imagine. Plus he’s just really, really cool. The voice is smooth, and deliberate and steadying. I was very much put at ease within the first few minutes.

Oh! And also? He spoke to me for so much longer than I expected him to. Extremely generous with his time.

Roberta Lipp: So, you know, as a fan, I want you to not be nervous.

Jon Hamm: Okay.

RL: You know, we’re very big, but, you know, just relax and be yourself.

JH: Can do!

RL: So what are you up to? Where are you right now? Are you making a movie?

JH: Yeah, I’m up in Boston right now shooting a film Ben Affleck is directing called The Town, and we are in like the last few weeks of that.

RL: So you went straight from wrapping to Boston; right? Like, you’ve been just not stopping?

JH: Yeah, I think it was kind of an error in judgment, I think, on my part because I was pretty beat by the end of the season and then went right into this. It was a lot of work.

RL: Yeah, I can’t imagine. So you got a few more weeks on that and then you’re going to relax?

JH: Well, I’ve got, you know, Thanksgiving and a couple weeks off, and then I’m going to go into another film that shoots up in Vancouver called Sucker Punch. It’s being directed by a guy named Zack Snyder who directed Watchmen.

RL: That sounds very cool.

JH: Yeah, I think so. I think it will be a good one.

RL: Congratulations just on everything.

JH: Well thank you.

RL: So we’re all freaking out; this is the greatest season. The last two episodes [the Gypsy and the Hobo and the Grownups] were haunting and really –I can’t even pretend to know where this thing is going, I haven’t guessed for weeks, and each episode doesn’t help; you know? It’s just amazing.

JH: Well, you know what, if I could continue by saying,it was sort of the theme and the watchword for the season would be change. And almost all of our characters’ lives; in their professional lives and in their personal lives certainly, we see a lot of things shift.
And, obviously, that’s being paralleled in the world around them, and in the culture around them shifting as well. We’re starting to see the beginnings of that change happen in the 60s in American culture. And, obviously with the events of the last episode with Kennedy’s assassination happening, that’s a pretty big watershed moment for a lot of people, and I think in retrospect for the culture at large.

RL: Yeah. You know, separately from each of the individual storylines, what people have been saying on our site is, “Oh, that’s what it felt like.” He really captured it.”

JH: Well, you know, I think obviously the closest thing that a lot of people have in their lives now is when 9/11 happened, and just sort of that bizarre feeling of what is happening and what is this and what does it all mean and what is the next day going to bring. And I think that there was certainly a parallel with those two situations, but maybe doesn’t have — because we obviously know the benefit of living four years afterwards. And of course you know everything will be all right and people will wake up in the morning, but it’s fundamentally shifted. And we know as people that live in the 21st century that this is only the first and one of many sort of really horrible seismic events to happen in this culture at this time and in a relatively short span. And so, you know, I think obviously there is a parallel between our — it’s disconcerting because we’ve had several, I think, serendipitous parallels politically with our show when we started season one we started in 1960 with the very contended and contentious election between Nixon and Kennedy, and then we’re coming out of an election of Kerry-Bush or Bush-Gore, and there was that whole sort of feeling where fully half of the country was dissatisfied with the results of the election. And then the second season with the Kennedy’s sort of descendant, we had Obama come in, and now it’s strangely similar in certain aspects. So we’ve been really kind of fortunate in having a secondary resonance that has happened with our show and in the culture at large, and I think that that’s enabled people to kind of keep relating personally. (more…)

I interviewed Rich back on October 10th, in order that we might discuss Wee Small Hours and have it posted right after it aired. It uhh–did not work out that way. Blogger interviewer FAIL.

But? Rich is such a delight, and we enjoy speaking with each other, and speaking about this show, so I think you’ll find it a good read. Blogger interviewer win!

We do a bit of hello and how are you and I tell him a bit about visiting the set and our experience meeting Hamm and then off we go.

Roberta Lipp: Honestly what our readers want to know first? How is Beatrice?

Beatrice is Rich’s daughter. He has a blog that he has mostly abandoned for Twitter, and his blog, among other things, kept us up to date on the wondrous young Beatrice.

Rich Sommer: She is very well. We’ve stopped posting pictures of her after a weird scare we had… We felt a little intruded upon so we’ve limited the amount of information we put out there. But she’s walking and talking and dancing. She takes ballet classes. She’s having a good time.

I did whittle this portion of our talk down; we both agreed that details were unnecessary. And of course, what you also don’t get from a transcript is all my ‘aww’ type sounds that I just make around toddler and toddler talk.

Oh, and by the way? I never even mentioned in this entire conversation how cool it was that they named the Crane daughter Beatrice. But we’d emailed about it when My Old Kentucky Home first aired. He was pleased as punch, naturally.

So finally we discuss Wee Small Hours.

RL: Do you think that Harry thinks that he handled it? Watching that scene, [the phone call between Harry and Lee Garner Jr.] it seemed like, y’know you changed the subject, you did a good tap dance, and the guy is drunk.

RS: Yeah, Harry thinks he’s handled it. I think Harry says what he thought was going to happen which was that he thought it was going to go away. And can’t really understand what’s going on—he’s so uninvolved in the other side of it. So yeah I think he thinks he did the right thing by him. He made essentially an executive decision. It turns out it wasn’t the decision that they would have wanted him to make but what else was he supposed to do, really? I don’t think he would have had much of a different outcome either way. I think they still would have said, Why the hell is he calling you?

RL: Right.

RS: And he still would have been in an uncomfortable position, where I think he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

RL: He was just as victimized, just in a different way, as Sal was.

RS: Yeah, absolutely. He was just as unjustly cornered. Obviously not in a physical way but by a guy who is very powerful in this agency and expects things to be done his way whether it makes sense or not.

RL: Overall, how do you think Harry’s doing at work? Is he competent and good at this position, or is he in over his head? (more…)