Mad Men redux: The time machine

(Note: Because AMC has been rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments.)

Spoilers for the "Mad Men" season finale coming up just as soon as someone tells me how long 20 minutes is...

How freakin' great was Don Draper's sales pitch to the Kodak people? So great that he wowed the Kodak guys into cancelling their other pitches. So great that it made me want to invest in a slide projector even in this age of digital photography. So great that it sold Don himself on illusion of the happy life he appears to share with Betty.

It's just too bad Don bought his own BS at the exact moment that Betty finally learned to see through it.

"The Wheel" had some questionable moments -- I'm still wrestling with how I feel about Peggy giving birth (more below) -- but that mesmerizing sales pitch scene, coming on the heels of Betty turning the tables and sending Don a message through her shrink, reaffirmed how much I love this show and how much I'm going to miss it until it comes back (more below on that as well).

I'll take Don's epiphany before Betty's. Though the matter of The Box was largely settled during last week's magnificent Don/Pete showdown, Don didn't find out until tonight that Adam had killed himself shortly after sending it. When I wrote last week about the horrible realization of Don abandoning his brother, I was referring both to leaving young Adam behind on the train platform but also to paying him off and sending him away in the present. In that moment when he talked to the fleabag hotel manager, Don came to the same realization I did -- that his cowardice and self-interest can have a dire cost on the people around him -- and it played out in maybe my favorite shot of the series, as the camera pulled back from Don, his face buried in his hands, his entire body aglow in the light from the desk lamp. (This was Matthew Weiner's directorial debut, and he did a fantastic job, as well as on the script.) Don may have run away from everything in his life, up to and including his own name, but he can't escape the basic truth of who and what he is and how much damage he does to the people around him.

Faced with the twin gutpunch of losing Adam and then finding out that Rachel Menken had, upon glimpsing the true face of Dick Whitman, gone on a three-month cruise, Don seemed to recognize that it was time to stop running -- or, at least, that he has nowhere left to run to. Harry's latenight, tighty-whitie-enhanced speech about the cavemen handprints reaching out to him from the distant past, gave him the Eureka moment for the Carousel sales pitch, and as he sold the Kodak guys on his vision -- "This device isn't a space ship. It's a time machine." -- he bought into all those Norman Rockwell images of himself, Betty and the kids.

(Interesting how, once again, Don has a chance to do a forward-thinking campaign -- the Kodak people specifically want the ad to include references to R&D and the science of the projector -- and once again chooses to go the nostalgic route. It works brilliantly for him here, but it's been a recurring theme of the series that Sterling Cooper is on the wrong side of a cultural shift, and I wonder if later seasons will deal with Don struggling to seem current.)

Betty, meanwhile, finally is forced to stop acting like a child and confront the reaity of Don's adultery. I love that it's so obvious to the world that Don is screwing around that Betty's friend Francine comes to her for advice on how to deal with news of her own husband's cheating, and yet Betty's oblivious. And even after that scene, she might have choosen to keep playing ostrich if only Don had given the right answer to her question about why Francine's husband would cheat. Something like "Because he's weak and selfish" or "Because he's a jerk and I've never liked him" -- anything but Don's self-incriminatingly vague "Who knows why people do what they do?"

After figuring out that Don and her shrink are regularly chatting about her sessions, Betty tries to seek comfort from, of all people, Helen the divorcee's creepy son Glenn -- another sign of Betty's own arrested development -- before realizing that she can turn this all to her advantage. She may not have the strength to confront Don directly, but she knows that her shrink is telling Don everything about her sessions, so why not send a message through him? (An added bonus: it makes her seem more sympathetic to the shrink, rather than just some spoiled housewife who keeps whining about her dead mother.)

Other cable shows have ended their first season with the anti-hero's wife packing up the kids and leaving (both "The Shield" and "Rescue Me" did it), but the difference here is that Betty's Thanksgiving trip was already planned. All Don did was fail to come home in time to join them. Among the many things I look forward to in season two (barring a time jump; again, see below) is how much, if at all, these epiphanies change the nature of the Draper marriage. After all, Weiner studied at the foot of David Chase, a man who clearly believed human beings to be incapable of real, lasting change. Will Don really dedicate himself to the marriage, or will he latch on to the next sophisticiated brunette he meets? Will Betty find a backbone, or will she go back to letting Don do all the thinking for her after he shows her a little extra affection?

I'm not sure I know what to think about Peggy giving birth. When she first started to gain the weight, it seemed an obvious direction. She had, after all, both gone on the pill and had sex with Pete in the very first episode -- Chekhov's "when you show a gun in the first act" and all that -- and it might have been an interesting direction to see Peggy try to deal with the Mommy Trap at the exact moment her copy writing career was beginning to blossom. But as the weeks went on with no reference to Peggy being with child, I became far more intrigued by the alternate explanations: that she was sublimating her desire for Pete with food, that she was subconsciously packing on the weight so the men of the office would stop looking at her like a conquest and more like a colleague, whatever.

So when Peggy wound up at the hospital and was revealed to be pregnant -- news to her as well as us -- I wasn't exactly thrilled. I can work around Peggy not questioning her lack of menstruation as a sign of both the times and her relative lack of sophistication, but it still doesn't completely sit right with me. Based on her refusal to look at the baby in the recovery room, my guess is she gives it up and shows up for work on Monday like nothing ever happened. That in itself says something interesting (and tragic) about Peggy's character, but it feels a little more predictable and TV-like than some of the other options.

Still, the moment when Don promoted her to junior copywriter was a glorious one. Previous episodes had established that she had real writing chops, and the subplot here with her and Ken trying to cast the radio spot showed that she was starting to learn to play the game. Not only was she willing to cut her losses quickly when it became obvious that she had made the wrong choice, but she fired the actress in such a way that she knew could get Ken laid if he wanted. Peggy's not some kind of feminist symbol, and I like that she has her own agenda that sometimes leads her to sacrifice her ideals about fair play and proper treatment.

Peggy's promotion was also great because it was yet another indignity for the loathsome Pete. After his humiliating defeat in Bert Cooper's office last week, he discovers that he'll continue having to live off of hand-outs from one set of parents or the other. He tries to play landing the Clearasil account as some kind of tremendous achievement, but even though Don (briefly) takes pity on him and pretends that he's impressed, both men know it's just another in a long list of Pete skating by based on family connections. And even that small moment of triumph gets ruined for Pete when Don -- who has finally learned to see Peggy as both a writer and a person worthy of his respect -- decides to assign the Clearasil campaign to Peggy. Pete exiting the season in a huff seems about right.

What a brilliant show.

Some other thoughts on "The Wheel":

• Though I'm ambivalent about the pregnancy reveal, it did work nicely in parallel with a couple of the men's stories. First, we have Pete's in-laws pressuring him to give them a grandchild at the exact moment that Pete's illegitimate offspring is born. Second, Peggy's baby's a "whore child," not in the literal sense that Dick Whitman was, but in how he'll be treated by society if his true parentage is known. (And if the baby gets adopted, he'll be raised by others the way Dick was.)
• Duck Phillips has only had the head of accounts job for one episode, but already, he's distinguished himself from Roger in a crucial way: he turned down the offer of a drink in the middle of a work day. Given the gossip we heard last week about his London meltdown, I'm guessing he's a recovering alcoholic.
• After their amazing party sequence last week, the supporting cast largely takes a backseat to our four main characters in the finale. But I really liked the glimpses of Harry -- who had clearly confessed to his wife at the earliest opportunity -- crashing at the office and roaming around in his unflattering undies. Compare that to secretive Don, who even when he sleeps in his office manages to look dashing.
• Weiner apparently said in an early interview that he'd like each season to pick up two years after the previous one ended, so that he could cover the entire '60s in a five-season period. I don't know that I love the idea -- too many things happened late this season that I want to see immediate follow-up to (Peggy's promotion and whatever choice she makes about the baby, Betty's newfound awareness of Don's infidelity, Don's ascension to partner and Roger's health problems, etc.) -- but it would appear Weiner's backing away from the idea. At the very least, he doesn't want to commit to it, judging by this great, in-depth interview Maureen Ryan did with him a few days back. In the interview, Weiner also talks about how he wants to go back into production by November so they can be back on the air by June. I really hope there isn't a writer's strike, or "Mad Men" will be one of many, many shows that will get stuck in limbo until the labor dispute is resolved.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Election night is party night!

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for "Nixon vs. Kennedy," the penultimate episode of "Mad Men" season one, coming up just as soon as I direct a one-act play...

"Mr. Campbell, who cares?"

Hah! Hah! Hah! Yes! Hah!

If that wasn't my exact reaction to Bert Cooper's reaction to the Dick Whitman news, it's only because I'm not sure where the "Yes!" went.

It's not that I was surprised by that response. After Pete walked off with The Box at the end of last week's episode, I talked it over with a bunch of "Mad Men"-worshipping critics, and we came up with several scenarios for how this might play out: 1)Pete resists the urge to use this knowledge, either out of fear or one final attempt to get Don to like him; 2)Pete simply doesn't understand the contents of The Box; 3)Pete successfully blackmails Don into getting his support for the head of Accounts job; or 4)Pete takes the info to Cooper, and Cooper -- Ayn Rand-loving, every man for himself, up by your bootstraps Bert Cooper -- says, well, "Who cares?" (Or something like it.)

So it wasn't shock that made me so overjoyed by the response, but rather Matt Weiner staying true to the spirit and themes of the show, not only with Cooper's response, but how both Don and Pete behaved throughout the story. Cooper believes in Rand's theories of rational self-interest, but also in the power of advertising, of creating the reality your customer wants to be sold. Who cares who Don Draper used to be if he can sell cigarettes and make Cooper money? If anything, Don's reinvention, if Cooper knew all the details of it (which we finally do; more below), would only raise his opinion of his creative director.

When Pete tries to play bully -- the only trick he knows -- with the info contained in The Box, Don resorts to the most important trick he knows, the one the hobo taught him. He wants out, wants to grab Rachel Menken and go anywhere but where he's about to be revealed for the fraud he's always been. But lucky for him (and those of us who get to witness the glorious smackdown), Rachel wants no part of that. She finally sees Don for who he is and the image she's sold herself on, calls him a coward and tells him to leave. In a series in which characters are too often willing to be prisoners in their own lives, Rachel takes control of hers and kicks Don to the curb. That, coupled with Peggy's speech about how following the rules gets you nowhere in a world where bad people have all the advantages -- culminating in the same "It's not fair" line that Don used when discussing the election results with Cooper -- leads Don to finally, however briefly, make a stand for something other than himself. He knows that he's probably going to lose in a scenario where Pete rats him out to Cooper, but he also knows that Pete's going to lose, too -- Cooper's not the type to value rats -- and if he has to sacrifice himself to prevent Pete's advancement, so be it.

And Pete, who is as clueless about self-sacrifice as he is about his own limitations (I loved Don's non-answer to the question about what Duck could offer that Pete couldn't; it reminded me of the old Louis Armstrong line, "If you gotta ask, you'll never know"), isn't smart enough to avoid the mutually-assured destruction scenario. Don keeps his job, and he doesn't even need to take up Cooper on the offer to fire Pete, because he knows how much power he now holds over the little weasel -- and how little respect Cooper now has for Pete.

And yet, as I was noting in this morning's column, Don's really only an admirable soul when you hold him next to someone like Pete (or Paul, or Ken). Though the flashback to how Dick Whitman wound up assuming Don Draper's identity (after accidentally starting the fire that killed Draper) didn't make him look too much the heel, the final flashback to Dick-turned-Don on the train, watching his family and ignoring the cries from young Adam, showed just how destructive Don's selfish impulses can be. Sure, he's out of that place, but he strands Adam there, knowing he's been abandoned by his brother. It's a scene made many times more affecting by our knowledge of how Don would treat Adam years later, and what that would lead Adam to do. You see that little boy, and all he wants is to see his big brother again, and it's devastating. In that moment, I had only one thought in my head: Goddamn you, Don Draper. I know your childhood sucked, but think about someone else just once, okay?

While the Don/Dick/Pete situation was the heart of the episode, a surprising -- and rewarding -- amount of time was spent on the junior staff's election night debauchery. I clocked that segment -- from when Don leaves the office on Tuesday to when Peggy arrives on Wednesday -- as close to 15 minutes, which is an eternity in TV time, even with the brief interludes at the Draper and Campbell households. Yet it didn't feel long. Like the other "Mad Men" episodes that focus on after-hours (say, "Marriage of Figaro" or "The Hobo Code"), there was a hypnotic, voyeuristic quality to these scenes, as if any plot developments (Harry sleeping with Pete's secretary Hildy) or character revelations (Paul once scored with Joan, but she spurned him because he bragged about it to the other chipmunks) are less important than the simple act of being with these people. It's like Weiner says: when this show is really working, it's less a drama than some kind of time machine. That sounds pretentious as hell until you get a look at that water cooler full of creme de menthe or see everyone sitting politely to watch Salvatore and Joan perform Paul's stupid play.

God, I love this show.

Some other thoughts on "Nixon Vs. Kennedy":

• Lead director Alan Taylor was in charge of the series' most cinematic episode to date. The fluid camerawork throughout the office party was a wonder to behold and the push-in on Don after Pete made his initial threat (pictured above) showed just how right Taylor was when he insisted to Weiner that the dominant image of the opening credits should be the back of Jon Hamm's head. (As Weiner put it, Taylor said to him, "Have you seen the back of this man's head? Have you seen what that is, what presence that is? Who is this person, this mystery?")
• The flashback with young Adam solved the chronology confusion from "5G" -- this was the moment he talked about when he said he was 8 years old when he saw Don in his uniform -- but that also means that someone in charge of casting thought Jay Paulson could pass for 18, which he couldn't. Win some, lose some.
• A cliche of black and white romantic movies was the moment where the plain Jane heroine would take off her dowdy spectacles and get the "Why, without your glasses on, you're beautiful!" reaction from the hero. I'm not saying Rich Sommer, who plays Harry, is a matinee idol without his glasses, but it was stunning how different he looked (or how different Sommer carried himself) in the morning-after sequence with Hildy. Harry's gotten the least screen time of the chipmunks, previously established as the nerdy married guy who lives vicariously through the adventures of guys like Paul and Ken. Now he's gone and bedded Hildy -- whose rejection of every one of Pete's clumsy advances fuels Pete's hatred of her -- and you can see what an awful mistake he realizes it was.
• Getting back to Paul's roman a clef, "Death Is My Client" (in which he couldn't even be bothered to come up for another name for the off-stage Ken Cosgrove character, so much does he resent Ken's literary success), did you catch that whopper of a kiss Salvatore laid on Joan, not to mention Salvatore's beaming expression after? Sadly, it looks like he's decided to give heterosexuality a go (or at least to continue with his self-denial). Which interpretation of Joan's reaction do you favor: that she finally realized he's gay, that she always suspected and was surprised he kissed her so well, or that she was simply turned on by it?
• I spent a lot of time in today's column praising Jon Hamm, but I feel like I can't leave unmentioned the stunned look on Don's face as he walks out of Cooper's office after getting off scot-free. What a performance by this guy.
• Great work by the make-up (or prop) team on the real Draper's corpse. And yet crispy-fried Don Draper grossed me out less than Pete warning Peggy to be nice to him.
• Did anyone else catch that the black elevator operator and janitor who got fired after Peggy complained about her stolen blouse and cash (which were no doubt swiped by a white S/C employee) were likely the same two who were there the morning of Peggy and Pete's assignation on his office couch?

What did everyone else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Good vibrations

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Easiest post title ever (though I was briefly tempted to go with "It's my ID in a box!"). Spoilers for the latest "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I enjoy some Yankee BBQ...

One of the running -- and oft-disputed -- themes of my "Mad Men" reviews is how little seems to happen in each episode in terms of actual storylines. That's never been a complaint -- I view this show as an atmospheric first, a character piece second and an ongoing narrative a distant third -- but it's definitely not a comment I could make about episode 11, "Indian Summer."

Let's see, what happened? Well, Don's half-brother Adam, hung himself (no doubt feeling low from his brother's rejection and cold pay-off), and before that sent a mysterious package (labeled "personal") to Don's office. Roger returned to work far too soon to put on a show for the Lucky Strikes people, but instead suffered another heart episode that probably signals the end of his active role at Sterling Cooper. Bert Cooper promoted Don to partner and put Don in charge of finding Roger's replacement as the head of accounts -- a job that Pete has his eye on, and may now have the blackmail ammunition to get, as he intercepted the mysterious Adam Whitman package.

As Andrew Johnston noted in his episode review over at The House Next Door, Matt Weiner studied at the foot of David Chase, and "Sopranos" seasons tended to have all the big events take place in the penultimate episode (as well as the one before). If Weiner holds true to that form, expect even more chaos next week -- much of it, I'm sure, revolving around that package -- followed by a more contemplative final hour more in the vein of Don's night out with Midge and her beatnik pals.

I hope this isn't, in fact, the last we'll see of Roger, because John Slattery continues to play the hell out of this oily charmer. I don't know how much of Roger's ashen appearance was the makeup team and how much was Slattery, but I almost felt for the bastard in his time of weakness -- until, of course, he confessed to Joan that his great near-death revelation was that she was "the finest piece of ass I've ever had, and I don't care who knows it." You stay classy, Roger Sterling. (LIke Andrew Johnston -- and, at this late date, I'm half-tempted to just tell you to go read his fine review, because we're in such synch on this episode -- I did wonder why Cooper felt compelled to trot out Roger for this dog and pony show, given that the Lucky Strikes guys didn't seem all that concerned about his absence, so long as Don could be kept in the fold.)

Meanwhile, in the character-over-plot portion of the episode (sort of), Peggy and Betty both discovered the pleasure of things that vibrate, albeit for different reasons: Peggy while testing out a "weight-loss" belt that's really a precursor to modern feminine sex aids, a sexually frustrated (and literally overheated) Betty while leaning against her dryer while in the midst of another stultifying day as a domestic goddess.

I'm assuming, at this point, that the speculation about Peggy being pregnant with Pete's demon-spawn was incorrect, that her weight gain (and here I absolutely have to credit the makeup department, because the facial prosthetics looked seamless) is simply a reaction to the stress of her job and the mind games Pete's been playing with her. Regardless, it's interesting how Weiner and the writers are showing Peggy make genuine progress in her copy writing career -- to see even self-interested Ayn Randian Don treat her as a colleague in need of support and encouragement -- while also showing her becoming just as awful in her own way as Paul and Kenny and the rest of the guys. Her behavior on the date with the outer borough guy couldn't have been more condescending, and while some of that can be ascribed to the period -- there's no roadmap for how a woman like Peggy should respond to succeeding in a man's profession -- she was still quite awful. Maybe she and Pete do deserve each other, after all.

Betty's acknowledgement of her sexual needs -- to a point, anyway, as she seemed to get off the dryer before, um, getting off -- was interesting, and served as a fine illustration of all the things that Don isn't thinking about when he's with Rachel. My wife was of the opinion that she told Don about the A/C salesman because she wanted to gauge his reaction, to see if he still cared about her, but if that was her intention, I don't think she understands her husband well enough at all. Don didn't get mad because of the notion of his wife being around another man; he got mad because another man was around his "property," both his house and the wife he considers as housekeeper and nanny and not much more.

What did everybody else think? How much trouble is Pete going to cause in the final two weeks of the season? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Doublemint Don

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for the 10th episode of "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I sit through a Billy Wilder movie marathon...

Boy, I wish AMC had scheduled this show so that its run would have wrapped up before the network season began. It's not that I'd be torn between watching it and the rotting corpse of "ER," as "Mad Men" would beat almost every network drama head to head for me right now (and I see most episodes in advance, besides), but because each episode is so dense and layered that it deserves a deeper analysis than I'm capable of giving it now that I'm blogging 17,000 other shows. So I'm going to hit this episode bullet-point style, and trust you very smart people to cover everything I miss. Based on the comments for the recent episodes, I think the show's in good hands.

So, breaking it down story by story:

Roger's twin trouble: Boy, John Slattery has no problem playing appalling creeps, does he? I thought his golden shower-loving comptroller from "Sex and the City" couldn't be topped, but the entire sequence with the twins made me feel very dirty. Comparing Mirabelle to his daughter and sugggesting he wanted to suck her blood like Dracula was bad, but the squirmiest moment for me was when he asked them to kiss, and Mirabelle sadly noted that everyone asks them to do that. You want the perfect way to destroy a girl's self-esteem so she'll sleep with your ancient WWII veteran behind? Convince her that she's worthless except as part of a matched set.

Now, do we think the writers will actually bump off Roger? I know there's been a lot of speculation that Slattery isn't long for the show based on his "Very Special Guest Star" designation, but that's not unheard of treatment for the biggest name in a cast of unknowns (see Heather Locklear on "Melrose Place," to name one precedent). Roger dying would open some interesting story possibilities -- Cooper looking for a new partner, Don perhaps being considered, the jockeying by the chipmunks to move up the ladder, Joan trying to land a new semi-steady man -- but I would hate to lose the oily, entitled charm that Slattery brings to the role. And his loss would in turn deprive Jon Hamm of the opportunity for great moments like Don's half-angry, half-kind, "Mona! Your wife's name is Mona!" while the paramedics were (slowly) wheeling Roger out of the office. (My favorite Don moment since his Jesus/kabuki sales pitch to the Belle Jolie people.)

Joan's roommate trouble: Speaking of annihilating a woman's self-esteem, how about Joan's poor roommate Carol? On the one hand, Carol has no one to blame but herself for trailing after the obviously hetero Joan like a lovesick puppy for so many years, hoping against hope that Joan might one day decide to switch teams and notice the knock-out blonde in the adjacent bedroom. On the other, it was still heartbreaking to watch Joan completely dismiss her declaration of love like it never happened, and then to see Carol give in and tell her lame middle-aged suitor to do whatever he wanted to her.

That Joan somehow didn't recognize Carol's deep and obvious love for her suggests either a willful blindness, a sign of the social mores at the time (it never would occur to Joan in the same way that the chipmunks have no gaydar about Salvatore), or that she's not as good at reading people as she suggests. Whatever the reason, it's a shame she probably doesn't recognize that Salvatore's queer as a three-dollar bill (though he was trying awfully hard to seem not while hitting on the various twins), because if ever there were two characters on this show who could really offer something to each other as friends/sympathetic ears, it's Carol and Salvatore.

And yet Joan gets her own tragic moment as she has to hold her head up and act professional in front of Mr. Cooper -- not realizing that he's sharp enough to know who's doing who in that office -- after hearing of Roger's heart attack. For a man who sold himself to Don as inherently self-interested a few episodes back, Cooper had himself a selfless moment when he advised Joan she could do better than Roger. (Or was it selfless? I suppose you could argue that he thinks Joan will be a better secretary to him if she were in a happier relationship, but I doubt that.)

Pete and Peggy's sexual harassment seminar: Only one real scene 'twixt these two, but a good one (and you know I'm generally ambivalent about them), as Pete -- Pete! -- accuses Peggy of acting unprofessionally when in fact she's going out of her way to be professional to him in the face of his constant advances and retreats. I usually have an issue with Vincent Kartheiser's delivery seeming too mannered, but there was genuine cruelty in Pete's retort to Peggy referencing their wild romp on the couch: "That's some imagination you've got. Good thing you're a writer now. What do you need me for?"

The truth about Dick Whitman, part one: When you have a fundamentally mysterious central character like Don/Dick, you have to walk a very fine line between revealing enough of the mystery to help the audience understand him (and keep them from getting annoyed at your evasiveness) and giving so much away that the mystery disappears. Nearly two weeks after I first watched this episode, I still can't decide whether Don's confession to Rachel falls too far on the latter side of that line.

Sure, we still don't know the reasons and mechanism for his transformation from Dick to Don, but that scene spelled out everything else we needed to know, including some things that were so strongly implied in "The Hobo Code" episode that further elaboration was unnecessary. Now we know the exact translation of "I'm a whore child," why his stepmom clearly hated him so, the identity of "Uncle Mack," etc. We even had more clarification than was needed of Don's attraction to Rachel. We already knew he was drawn to her as a fellow outsider and independent thinker; did they have to share the mom dying in childbirth thing as well?

And yet, damn is Jon Hamm good. He'll never get within sniffing distance of an Emmy nomination, but there are very few dramatic actors on television at the moment whose work I enjoy as much or more. (Hugh Laurie, Kyle Chandler, Michael C. Hall, and...? I think that's it.) Even as Don is spilling his guts and eliminating some of his mystique, I'm fascinated by the guy.

And I see I somehow didn't even manage to discuss the series' first references to "The Apartment," which has a lot of relevance for both Joan and Peggy. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Gianni on the spot

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for episode nine of "Mad Men" (titled, appropriately in more ways than one, "Shoot") coming up just as soon as I start a diet...

How many different types of splendid was that final shot? Scary, funny, tragic and kinda hot, all in one. But we'll get back to that, after looking at all the forces that conspired to have Betty in her nightie (at 1 in the afternoon) casually shooting at her neighbor's pigeons.

Betty was a model, you know. She'll tell you (in nearly identical words each time) if you raise the subject. It's her crutch, her way of dealing with this desperate housewife life she absolutely doesn't want. In the back of her mind, she knows that she was once a model -- and still has the Grace Kelly looks to potentially be one again -- just as in the back of her closet she keeps the designer clothes given to her by "Gianni." (BTW, Gianni Versace would have been about 14 in 1960 -- and practically fetus-sized back in Betty's modeling days -- and it's a common Italian name, so I don't think the show was going there.)

Back in the day, modeling wasn't really something looked at as a long-term career. There were, as Betty notes, some women who became very rich and famous doing it, but the era of the model as routine celebrity was still a bit off in the future (thanks to Andy Warhol and Twiggy) and Betty no doubt looked on the profession as a means for landing a man just as obviously as Joan thinks Peggy should be doing. (More on that in a minute.) But the choice was also tied into her mother's "painting a masterpiece" philosophy expressed a few episodes back (when Joan looked even more Grace Kelly-ish than she did last night); Betty no doubt thought her mom would be pleased she chose a job that highlighted her beauty, but instead her mom called her a prostitute for it. (The more we learn about Betty's late mom, the more I think Betty isn't so much grieving as letting out a few decades of repressed anger.) So she modeled for a while until she got with Don and became trapped in suburbia.

Jim Hobart offers her a lifeline -- only as a means to get at Don, which Betty doesn't realize -- but I'm really fascinated by Betty's reaction to getting fired by the Coca-Cola people. She gets upset, but not in a defiant, "I'll show them" way where she intends to use those gorgeous photos to get another gig; she just gives up, surrenders back to her stifling life in Ossining, where she's bored but at least not subject to rejection. Don consoles her by telling her what an amazing mother she is -- and of course that's Don's chief attraction to her, given his upbringing and the fact that he seeks sexual and intellectual satisfaction from outside women -- and she responds by showing the neighbor what a real protective mama bear looks like, casually shooting away at his stupid birds in response to his threat to shoot her children's beloved dog Polly. She gets to show off her matriarchal side while also taking out her agression on the world that she feels has confined her to this house, this lawn, this life where she can still be in a nightie in the afternoon and it won't really matter. Ronnie, the Salvatore-esque art director for Coke, tells her that getting fired "has nothing to do with" her. The problem is, nothing has anything to do with her, and that's slowly driving Betty crackers.

Meanwhile, Don's reaction to all of this was equally interesting and unexpected. I just assumed he would be against the modeling thing from the start, want to keep Betty confined to her motherhood box, but he seemed genuinely supportive throughout, even after the incident with the kids and the neighbor suggested that Betty was falling down on her original job. Then Hobart made the mistake of sending over the photos and Don finally recognized that the whole thing was just another set of golf clubs. So if you're Don, what do you do? You do love your wife and want her to be happy (even as you pursue relationships with other women) and know how much she cares about this job -- which will disappear if you don't sign on at the bigger firm. But you also hate being manipulated by others -- if Hobart would pull this stunt with your wife now, what might he try in the future if you and he clash? -- and are, at heart, a selfish Ayn Rand man. I guess you do exactly what Don did; you finagle a ginormous raise out of Roger and tell Hobart to cram it. Still, it's really sad that Betty got turned into a pawn in all of this.

Some minor bits of business with Peggy, Pete and Joan this week. I really liked Joan and Peggy's talk about the dress and Peggy's motivations for doing the copy-writing thing, as it clarifies once and for all that Joan isn't jealous of Peggy, just confused. The notion of trying to play the man's game at Sterling/Cooper has never even occurred to her.

I also liked Pete repeatedly getting shot down in his attempts to celebrate his big triumph with the laxative/Nixon stunt, whether it was Don responding to Pete's "Are we done here?" with a simple "No" or Pete's poor secretary refusing to drink or even flirt with him and the other chipmunks. I don't read too much into him taking a swing at Kenny for trash-talking Peggy, as there was a definite "nobody picks on her but me" vibe to it all, as opposed to Pete realizing he had treated her like garbage last week. (Also, vis a vis Kenny's "lobster" description of Peggy, I suddenly imagined him as an old man today complaining that J-Lo and Jessica Biel are too fat because they have some junk in the trunk.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Trapped in the closet

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for "Mad Men" episode eight coming up just as soon as I find a piece of chalk...

Poor Salvatore. Poor damn Salvatore.

There was simultaneously a lot going on in this episode (more Dick Whitman backstory, lots of character work) and not very much (what there was of the plot ended at the 15 minute mark), and I want to write about it all, but I really feel the need to start with Salvatore because... damn. I actually had to pause my review screener for a moment to shake some dust out of my eye, you know?

Just as episode four added major shadings to the previously two-dimensional Pete, so does episode eight transform Salvatore from chronological inside joke -- he's a big fat queen and nobody gets it! -- into a fully-realized, tragic character. And in a completely unexpected way, at that.

I had assumed that the storyline would end one of two ways: Salvatore completely misreads the guy, who turns out to be straight and none too happy at another man making a pass at him; or the guy is gay but too afraid to do anything with Salvatore the accomplished homosexual. I never for a second would have thought it would be the other way around, because Salvatore has been written (and played by Bryan Batt) with so much confidence and energy and life force that I just assumed he had some kind of rich sex life in whatever underground gay scene New York had at the time. The notion that he's too afraid to act on his feelings, that he's a 40-year-old (gay) virgin, never even occurred to me, and yet when Salvatore revealed that he wouldn't know what to do in bed, then ran off altogether, well... like I said, dust. As with the Pete episode, it completely changes the way I view a lot of his prior behavior without in any way contradicting it. Who would have thought that Salvatore might genuinely feel more comfortable flirting with the pretty phone operator (who apparently replaced Mel from "Conchords") than the handsome cosmetics salesman, if only because he knows the former will never go anywhere? Just a superb scene, and a character I'm really going to have my eye on in the future.

Meanwhile, Don smokes enough primo kush to give us an extended flashback to his childhood. If nothing else, this episode should put the "Don is a closeted Jew" theory to bed once and for all, unless you want to assume that the mother who made him a "whore child" was Jewish. (Given how seriously Christian Dick's stepmom was, by the way, "whore child" could mean anything from his mom being an actual whore to his dad knocking up his mistress to his dad knocking up some random girl before he even got married. Obviously, far more onions to peel here.)

The hobo (played by Paul "Father Phil" Schulze from Matt Weiner's old show), meanwhile, turns out to be an enormously influential figure in Don's life, far more than the old man from whom he only inherited his looks and smoking habit. The notion of being a traveling man, able to just walk away from a bad situation, has stuck with him. Don walked away from being Dick Whitman (and, more recently, from his own half-brother), walked away from his farm life and into first the military, then the hobo's hometown of New York. Throughout this series, when Dick's closely-guarded emotions come to a boil, his response is to flee, whether driving away from his daughter's birthday party or trying to fly Midge to Paris so he won't have to think about the validity of Mr. Cooper's Ayn Rand lecture. The episode's last shot asserts this again; Don's office is his ultimate retreat, a place that bears the mark of another man (and/or marks him as a liar like his father), and a place where he can get away from it all... at least until Pete or Roger or Kenny barges in to tell an off-color joke Don will be required to laugh at.

So is Don done with Midge? We've already established that he'll pay people off to get them out of his life, and that he's uncomfortable with her bohemian world, and that he suspects Rachel Menken is out there waiting for him. (Dumping Midge would also make Rachel more amenable; as I wrote a few weeks ago, I think she could deal with being The Other Woman, but not The Other Other Woman.)

The third of this week's storylines (if you can call any of them that) was its weakest, with Pete and Peggy hooking up again. After I said I was puzzled by Peggy's reaction to Pete's hunting fantasy last week, a bunch of you chimed in to say she was clearly turned on by it. I went back, watched again and could see what you were saying, even as I was repulsed by Pete's monologue. The problem, I think, is that Peggy, more than any character who's not Don, is written in a way that leaves the big motivational burden on the actor -- she's complicated and slightly mysterious, and there's no one she can deliver explanatory monologues to -- and I don't know that Elisabeth Moss is as up to that challenge as Jon Hamm clearly is. I know there's a way to reconcile Peggy's independent streak with her attraction to the oiliest, most juvenile man at Sterling/Cooper (smart women, foolish choices and all that), but I don't think Moss is bridging the gap between those two sides of her.

I also don't know how much she's being helped by Vincent Kartheiser, who often seems like he's trying too hard to disappear into this character from another era. He's very mannered, particularly in the way he talks, and while some of that can be written off as Pete the character trying too hard to assert himself as a man in front of people who don't respect him, I don't think that all of it can. So when you put these two actors in a scene together, it can be an uphill battle. Hopefully, Pete sniping that he doesn't like to see Peggy "like this" -- i.e. happy, successful and assertive -- may be enough to make her realize what a childish putz he is and move on, if only so we don't have to see this pairing of actors going forward.

On the plus side, we got to see Peggy's lipstick ad campaign work -- with some blunt force salesmanship from Don, in my second favorite scene of the episode after Salvatore's dinner -- without the predictable, "Melrose Place"-style twists where Pete or Joan sabotage her, take credit for her work, etc., etc. And the other two-thirds of the episode were superb. Even when nothing happens, everything is happening.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Stair master

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for the latest "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I fill up my chip 'n dip...

"You know who else doesn't wear a hat? Elvis. That's what we're dealing with." -Pete Campbell
"Remind me to stop hiring young people!" -Bertram Cooper

Black is white, up is down, and Pete is absolutely right in a conversation where Mr. Cooper couldn't be more wrong. Though Pete's his usual overcompensating putz of a self the rest of the episode (we'll get back to his target practice foreplay in a bit), he's the only man in the Nixon brainstorming session who actually recognizes the threat John F. Kennedy poses -- not just to Nixon's presidential ambitions, but to the status quo that the men of Sterling-Cooper are dedicated to maintaining. Cooper and Roger see Kennedy's hatless-ness as a deficit; Pete recognizes the newness of it, and the fact that the country seems ready to embrace something new.

"Mad Men" takes place at the dawn of JFK's New Frontier, the tipping point when the culture (both high and pop) began being driven by young people. As Andrew Johnston wrote while discussing the Paul subplot in episode two, "the Mad Men era is one of the last times in American social history when younger men strived to appear older rather than vice versa." Of course Sterling and Cooper see Nixon as their dream candidate; they're on the losing side of history and don't even realize it. (Don's not immune to this, either, as evidenced by the deodorant campaign from a few episodes back where he dismissed all of Paul's space-age ideas as something that would scare housewives.)

While the Pete/Cooper exchange is just a small part of episode seven, "Red in the Face," the tension between the generations is a key part of the friction between Don and Roger. Roger, put out when his wife, daughter and mistress all go away on the same weekend, comes home for dinner at the Draper house and when Don's not looking, he makes a pass at Betty as he feels is his right as the senior man. (Note how dismissive he is when he says, "Oh, his war" when Betty mentions Don's service in Korea.) At first, Don -- his head still stuck on a conversation where Betty's shrink claimed she had the emotional make-up of a little girl -- puts the blame on Betty, but when Roger is a bit too effusive in his apology the next day, Don figures out what really happened and begins plotting his revenge, which is built entirely on him being younger and in better shape than Roger. (Note that he never really apologizes to Betty, though.) He bribes the building elevator operator to fake an out of service situation, then takes Roger out for a lunch overflowing with martinis, oysters and cheesecake -- the sort of thing he can just barely handle, but which he knows will cause Roger all sorts of discomfort when they have to climb 23 flights of stairs. Roger ends up projectile vomiting in front of the Nixon people, and I have to wonder how much of Don's glee at the end is about humiliating Roger and how much is about the prospect of not having to work for Nixon.

While Don is busy getting revenge, Pete and Betty are each suffering mini-meltdowns. Pete has to exchange a duplicate wedding gift and it's such an emasculating ordeal that he decides to use the store credit to buy a .22 caliber rifle to overcompensate for his feelings of penile inadequacy. This only leads to more hen-pecking from his wife, and so Pete takes the gun to the office again and creeps out Peggy by revealing a long, detailed fantasy about being an old-school hunter-gatherer in the woods. (What are we to make, though, of Peggy's trip to the lunch cart immediately after? I have a harder time reading Elisabeth Moss than anyone else in the cast.)

Betty, meanwhile, runs into Helen the divorcee at the market, and the snipped lock of hair from episode four comes back to bite her. "He is nine years old," Helen complains. "What is wrong with you?" -- which prompts Betty to slap her across the face (not as hard as the dad slapped the kid at the birthday party, but still) and storm out of the store without any of her groceries.

So here's my question for the peanut gallery: how accurate, if at all, is the shrink's assessment of Betty? We're supposed to view him as an aloof, sexist figure since he reveals everything about the sessions to Don, but at the same time, something is definitely wrong in Betty's head. Giving Helen's son the lock of hair was a poor choice, and slapping Helen was an incredibly childish response.

Another strong episode. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Jews cruise

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for the sixth episode of "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I watch a dog play the piano...

After the last few episodes focused on Don and Pete, episode six is another look at the women of "Mad Men": the compromises made, the four very narrow and yet very different routes that Joan, Peggy, Rachel and Midge have chosen to navigate this world they never made.

Joan had been our mystery woman until now, the queen bee vamp who buzzed around the typing pool, handing out advice on matters both personal and professional without revealing anything about herself -- like, for instance, why a woman of her relatively advanced age (Christina Hendricks is 29, which would have made her an old maid in an office like that) still hasn't landed her own husband and got a house up in Westchester. Now we know the answer: Joan doesn't have the house because she doesn't want it. Like Midge, she enjoys being an independent woman, having her pick of multiple men -- notably Sterling/Cooper co-founder Roger Sterling, who, like Don, is both turned on troubled by his mistress's free spirit -- and not being tied down to any one of them. (She can brazenly wiggle her fanny in front of the two-way mirror because any or all of the men on the other side could be hers if she wanted them.) She has her roommate Carol, she has adventures and she doesn't want to be kept in a gilded cage like that stupid canary Roger buys her at episode's end. And yet where Midge lives her entire life outside the system, by day Joan is a keeper of that system, herding the secretaries around like cattle and trying to jump in between Peggy and Fred (the "creative" guy played by Joel Murray) as if she were a Secret Service agent trying to take a bullet for the president. As liberated as Joan is in some areas, she can't wrap her head around the notion of a fellow secretary having something useful to offer the ad guys; I'm sure she had the same dog/piano reaction that Fred had.

And speaking of Peggy, this is an interesting, if not totally unexpected route they're taking the character. The second episode, where Paul gave her a tour of the offices, established that female copywriters do exist, in very small numbers and only for accounts related to lady products, but this has some real potential. (If nothing else, I look forward to the first time she has to work for Don in this capacity instead of as his gal Friday.) And unlike David Duchovny's stupid, cliche-riddled blogging on "Californication," the phrases Peggy came up with ("basket of kisses," "I don't think anyone wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box") actually sounded good. If I was an ad guy in 1960 and I heard someone use those in casual conversation, I'd be intrigued, too.

Rachel Menken comes back into the picture as Don's token Jewish acquaintance, called in to help Don understand how to market a line of cruise ships bound for Israel. And after dismissing him out of hand in episode three because she had no interest in being someone's mistress, it now seems not a horrible idea to her. Being a female chief executive has to be rough on the love life today; in 1960, I imagine what suitors Rachel actually had tended to be guys after her money. The phone call with her sister suggests she's not the first member of her family on a path to old maidhood, and that has to be a scary proposition. The question is, is she prepared to compromise her values in the hopes that Don will leave his wife and marry her, or is she just that starved for companionship that she'll be The Other Woman? And how mad is she going to get when she realizes that she would, in fact, be The Other Other Woman?

Finally, Don visits Midge and gets another reminder of how poorly he fits into her world. Taking him to that coffee house might as well have been a trip to Mars for poor, conservative Don, and try as he did to mock Midge's other "friend" Roy, he's never going to be comfortable in bohemia. So will he attempt to swap Rachel in for Midge, or will he try to have all three women? And how will Midge respond to either scenario?

A few other thoughts:

• Any scene where John Hamm's hair isn't drowning in pomade is a bad idea. The opening scene where his hair was flopping around made him look far too much a modern man.
• Anyone care to analyze Don's dream of Adam's birth for clues about Dick Whitman's deep, dark secret?
• Anvil time: "Some men like eyebrows, and all men like Joan Crawford. Salvatore couldn't stop talking about her." Also, Salvatore's bitchy put-downs of the women on the other side of the mirror. I just can't believe nobody doesn't get it. The prime of Paul Lynde's career wasn't that far away, was it?
  
• Could have been anvillicious but wasn't: Rachel offering the alternative definition of "Utopia" as "the place that cannot be." Sounds not unlike the romantic space she wishes she could occupy with Don.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: I don't want to be a Dick

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for episode five of "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I hit the newsstand...

"Who is Donald Draper?"

That is indeed the question, young Adam Whitman, and will no doubt continue to be the central narrative pillar of "Mad Men." The show's not much on plot, but the mystery of Don's true identity -- not just his birth name, which we now know, but how and why he is who he is -- is a lot more interesting than any procedural cop story I watched in all the fall pilots.

In an episode where Jon Hamm has a lot of great moments, I think my favorite may be right at the end. Don's returned from paying off his brother to go away forever and is completely out of sorts. Betty tells him, "I want to talk to you about something, and I don't want you to get upset," and the look on his face is priceless, because there's such a long list of potential secrets Betty could have uncovered: the Dick Whitman thing, Midge, Rachel Menken, etc. No wonder Don's big brainstorm for their banking client was the secretive "Executive Account" -- if ever a man needed such a thing, it's Don, who has so much going on behind the scenes that his secretary assumes she's covering for one scandal (Midge) when it's something else entirely (Adam).

Though we now know for sure that the Dick Whitman incident on the train in episode three wasn't a case of mistaken identity, there's still a lot here that remains unclear. Did Dick/Don fake his death, or did Adam and the family just assume he was dead when he didn't come home after Korea? Is there identity theft going on, or just Don escaping the shame of his family, whatever that is? How long ago did he leave? Adam makes reference to seeing Dick/Don in his uniform, after his "death," when Adam was only 8. We know Don's service was in Korea (I have that straight from the creator's mouth, and there's a more explicit reference to it in an upcoming episode), which would put it less than a decade in the past, but Adam's clearly not a teenager. So either I misheard, the line was a continuity error, the producers mistakenly believed Jay Paulson could pass for 18, or something more complicated is going on.

Regardless, Adam is quite a bit younger than Don. He almost certainly can't have been involved in whatever horrible thing "mom" and "Uncle Mac" did to Don, is in fact so young that he doesn't seem to comprehend that something awful happened. So unless Don is keeping his old identity a secret for reasons beyond shame, his unsolicited payoff seems especially cruel. Maybe necessary, but cruel.

Meanwhile, I was inordinately delighted by the subplot about Kenny (who?) (exactly!) getting a short story published in The Atlantic Monthly, which promptly causes all the other young guys in the office to react like the high school prom queen realizing on her first in college that she's no longer the hottest girl around. Pete -- who just last week felt emasculated by the wealth and influence that comes with his family -- mocks Kenny as a nobody with a salesman for a father. Paul, pretentious, Orson Welles-impersonating Paul, can't believe an account rep (not a man from "creative") could accomplish such a thing, is taken aback that the premises for Kenny's two novels don't sound awful, then goes on a rant about all the brilliant ideas he has locked away in his oversized melon, like the one about "this crazy night I ended up in Jersey City with all these negroes and we all got along. Can you imagine how good that story is?" (Based on that logline, Paul? Probably not. Could be the premise for a Chris Tucker movie, for all I know.)

After going to great lengths last week to make Pete a sympathetic figure (as I said, to explain, if not apologize for him), the writers are back to using him as the selfish, tunnel-visioned little rat he was early on. Sending your wife back to see the ex-fiance who still holds a torch for her -- and guilting her into it by claiming it would "help make up for" her losing her virginity to that guy instead of Pete -- all to keep up with the Kennys of the world? Wow.

Last week, commenter Anthony Foglia asserted that the episode was the best so far: "One major benefit was that, unlike all the other episodes, it wasn't a particularly dated story. The time merely enhanced the drama, as opposed to being the root cause of it." That description applies to this subplot, and to much of the episode. The petty professional jealousy story translates easily to today -- though the achievement in question no doubt would have involved getting a short film into Sundance, or getting a million hits on the YouTubes or something you young people do. (Get off my lawn! Rarrr!) I can't speak to the Don stuff too much, simply because we don't know all the details of how and why he stopped being Dick Whitman, but there wasn't a lot of Frankeinstein-esque "Sixties baaaad!!!! Bread gooooood!!!" going on.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Mo' old money, mo' problems

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Brief spoilers for episode four of "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I borrow a neighbor's lock of hair...

I watched this episode about a month ago (even before I saw episode 3, for reasons too boring to elaborate on) and wasn't in a position to take notes at the time, so I can't say as much about it as previous weeks, but I liked it. The primary goal is to humanize Pete -- to explain him, if not apologize for him -- and it accomplished that.

Those of you who find the show too heavy-handed probably aren't going to have their opinions changed by scenes like the one pictured above, where Pete's blue-blood daddy (or is he?; the money comes from his mother's side) lectures him about how his job isn't fit for a white man. But it worked for me, in part because of those obnoxious Bermuda shorts an docksiders; sometimes, it's the odd detail that makes a scene. Pete's weird quest for approval from Don makes much more sense now, both in light of his own lousy father figure and the revelation that he intended to be a creative type, but the episode's not entirely a pity party for him. He massively oversteps his bounds with the Beth Steel man, and I like that Roger manages to frame things so it looks like Don saved his job.

In the other half of the episode, Betty goes down the rabbit hole by agreeing to babysit for Helen the divorcee while Helen's off cruising for men at a Kennedy campaign event. It's an interesting friendship (if you can call it that), because Betty has as many reasons to be jealous of Helen as she does to be afraid of becoming like her. Chief among the latter: Helen's creepy son, so out of sorts from the divorce that he's lost all sense of boundaries, walking in on Betty while she tries to pee and then demanding a lock of her hair. (Not sure which of the two is more disturbing, but it was amusing to see the machinations a woman like Betty had to go to to use the bathroom in that get-up.)

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men redux: Slappy birthday

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for the third episode of "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I read up on smoking during pregnancy...

"Draper? Who knows anything about that guy? Nobody's ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know." -Harry

Who the hell is Don Draper? Or is he even Don Draper? That, to me, is the central question -- and the most involving element -- of "Mad Men." Who is this chiseled Cary Grant type who seemingly has it all and yet doesn't feel at home anywhere? Why does he have this June Cleaver doormat wife and yet is drawn to strong-willed, independent adult women like Midge and Rachel? And what's this "Dick Whitman" business?

There are a couple of ways to read Don's encounter on the train: 1)The other guy made a mistake, and Don just played along to get out of the encounter as quickly and painlessly as possible; or 2)Don really was Dick Whitman once upon a time, and changed his identity for reasons we'll learn later. If it's the former, the scene's a comment on how Don often feels like he's living someone else's life; if it's the latter, what's the big secret? (My friend Rich Heldenfels thinks Don's a Jew trying to pass for WASP, which also explains his attraction to Rachel, a Jewish woman who doesn't want to pass but wants to be able to run her business as if she was a blue-blood.) While his face doesn't give anything away at the time (Don rarely gives anything away, which is a credit to Jon Hamm's performance, as another actor might just come off as blank), he's testier than usual when he gets to work, which could be read either as him being freaked out at having been spotted by someone from his Dick Whitman days or just him feeling threatened by the popularity of the Volkswagen "Lemon" ad.

Episode three had a very different structure from the first two, the first half largely occurring at work, the second half entirely devoted to Don's weekend at home and the birthday party. He seems in command in both worlds yet fits into neither. He's unprepared for the popularity of the ironic "Lemon" campaign, can't resist treating Pete like crap even when Pete's playing nice, then ruins things with Rachel by kissing her and finding out she's not as eager as Midge to be a mistress.

Still, it's a fast-paced existence, and life slows to a crawl up in Ossining. The scenes have a more languid, dream-like quality, as Don drifts from one mundane activity to another. I don't think Don hates Betty or the kids, but for reasons he either doesn't understand or can't articulate, he's on the outside of the family looking in, even before Betty makes him get behind the viewfinder of their movie camera. Him not coming back with the cake is the kind of move that could scar his daughter (though she seemed just fine with the dog), yet I can see why he couldn't get out of the car.

The party sequence was filled with those moments that some people find sledgehammer subtle and others just consider authentic period detail: the pregnant lady with the cigarette, the one husband scamming on Helen the divorcee, the dad who slaps another man's kid for spilling his drink (followed by the kid's own father forcing his son to apologize). I understand both sides of this argument. Like I mentioned in the mailbag column, I know pregnant women smoked at the time, but it's such a shocking image now that I can see how for some people, the scene becomes entirely about the pregnant lady. It's a really fine line to walk; I think Weiner and company are succeeding so far, but I recognize why others disagree.

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Mad Men redux: Ambivalent women

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for "Mad Men" episode two coming up just as soon as I buy a new child safety seat for the car...

After devoting much of the pilot to the title characters, episode two of "Mad Men" is for the ladies -- mostly.

Betty Draper, kept off camera for most of last week to serve the pilot's not-so-shocking twist ending, gets to play screentime catch-up. We learn that she's suffering from some kind of condition where her hands freeze up at inopportune moments. (I don't know enough about medical history to understand whether Betty's condition is really psychosomatic, as her doctor suggests, or simply something a doctor in 1960 wouldn't be able to diagnose.) She's out of sorts, depressed about the recent death of her mother, crushed by her role as homemaker but not understanding that there could be an alternative, frustrated that Don is just as big a mystery to her as he is to everyone else. When they lie in bed together, she looks at him and whispers, "Who's in there?" It's not apparent yet whether she suspects Don is sleeping around, but she's thrown by the news that a divorcee has moved into the neighborhood. As claustrophobic and terrifying she may find her life, being a single mom in 1960 Westchester sounds infinitely more terrifying.

It's really scary to see how constrained Betty's life is, how much control of it is placed -- by her ignorance and by the standards of the time -- in the hands of Don. He's the one who pushes her to see a therapist, and he's also the one who can then call up the therapist to find out what Betty talked about in her session. January Jones has a look that works really well with the style of the time (in present-day movies, I don't usually notice her, but she has this vaguely Grace Kelly quality when you put her in the dress and the hair and the makeup), and I'm glad she's portrayed as more than just the ball and chain that Don escapes from with work and with Midge.

And speaking of our resident beatnik floozy, we find that she's not just Don's mistress, but rather a free love type who sleeps around, an arrangement that has its pluses and minuses for both of them. Don doesn't have to feel completely guilty that he goes back to Betty the next day because he knows Midge has other guys, but he also can't help getting upset when evidence of those guys -- say, Midge's new TV set (on which her favorite show is the same as Don's kids') -- stares him right in the face. And Midge doesn't have to feel like a kept woman who's breaking up a marriage, but she still can't stand to hear about Betty. When Don says, "I can't decide if you have everything, or nothing," she tells him, "For the moment, nothing is everything." On some shows, that line would sound like psychobabble masquerading as profound insights, but the small details of how these characters are written and played gives it real meaning.

With Pete off on his honeymoon (an excuse to sketch in the other young guys at the agency), Peggy gets a bit closer to Paul, one of the copywriters on Don's team. Paul is set up to be everything that Pete and his cronies aren't -- well-read, semi-enlightened (he at least sees the value in women copywriters for certain types of jobs), not as blatant in his advances -- but in the end he's revealed to be just another horny guy trying to get with the new girl, and Peggy is only able to fend him off by hinting at her involvement with Pete. (Paul assumes the man she's talking about is Don, and in one of my favorite lines of the episode, says, "Do you belong to someone else? Shit. I don't even like to sit in Don's chair.")

I'm just very taken with this show, and if I wasn't so burnt-out from being at press tour for two weeks (see the latest iteration of my Bon Scott/Alex O'Loughlin problem), I'd attempt to elaborate more about what it continues to well. Instead, it's on to our friends the bullet points:

• Yes, People Really Lived This Way moments of the week: the Draper kids drive without child seats, or even seat belts, and are completely unharmed in Betty's fender bender, and the daughter runs around the house with a dry cleaning bag over her head and Betty's only concern is that her dress might get ruined without the bag on it.
• John Slattery has just nailed the arrogance and indifference of a guy like Roger. Again, an exchange like the "What do women want?" "Who cares?" bit between Don and Roger could have come across as being written in italics, but Slattery makes Roger's attitude seem like the natural thing.
• Robert Morse! How perfect is that? They cast Robert Morse -- star of the original version of "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" -- as Mr. Cooper, head of the agency.

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Mad Men redux: Smoke gets in your eyes

(Note: Because AMC is rerunning the first season of "Mad Men" every Sunday at midnight, and because a lot of people missed the show the first time around, I'm reposting my blog reviews for each episode the morning after. These are written as they were back in the summer/early fall; if I feel differently about anything in retrospect, I'll mention it in the comments. Also, while comments from both newbies and people who watched the first time are welcome, if you've seen these episodes before, please be vague about events in later episodes so as not to spoil things for the newcomers.)

Spoilers for the debut of "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I smoke up a pack of Old Golds...

Well, that was fun, wasn't it? I mean, there's some problem with subtlety from time to time (gay Salvatore butching it up at the burlesque club, the Nixon/Kennedy and Xerox jokes), and I know I wasn't the only critic who was confused at first when AMC asked us not to spoil the ending with January Jones (since we didn't think it was surprising enough to qualify as a twist), but beyond that... pure coolness.

I spent a while with Matthew Weiner at AMC's press tour party (a swinging affair at the Friar's Club, with Jeff Goldblum and his jazz band playing songs from 1960), and when I mentioned that I hadn't seen a particular episode, he smiled and said, "You're gonna love it. It's about time travel." I cocked my head, raised my eyebrows and tried to figure out whether he'd had a few too many Old Fashioneds, or if he was taking the show into David Lynch territory.

But when I finished the episode in question, I understood what he meant. Where some shows set in the past can't help but feel like it's a bunch of actors playing dress-up, "Mad Men" made me feel like I was getting a glimpse of what New York of that era really looked, sounded and smelled like.

It helps that, with the exceptions of Elisabeth Moss and John Slattery, I don't have much of a history watching these actors, so I didn't spend a lot of time admiring how the hair and makeup people had transformed them. (From what little I remember of Connor-era "Angel," Vincent Kartheiser is unrecognizable as Pete the account rep weasel.) But there's a real commitment to period detail: the clothes, the hairstyles and, especially, the cigarettes and attitudes.

The two come together in the opening scene, where we meet our hero Don Draper (Jon Hamm, looking like he's on his way to audition for "Superman") working on an ad campaign for Lucky Strikes, now that the government has ruled that tobacco companies can't promote their products as healthy. He asks a black waiter named Sam why Sam smokes Old Golds; Sam's not used to rich white customers trying to engage him in conversation, and Sam's boss automatically assumes Sam is harassing Don. (Because even in 1960 Manhattan, why would a man like Don want to talk to a man like Sam?) Don waves the boss away without exactly getting indignant on the black waiter's behalf, and the two men talk tobacco. Sam explains that he smokes Old Gold because that's what they gave him in the Army (an early crossover between government and corporate marketing interests), and as they banter back and forth, he mentions that his wife wants him to give up smoking because of an article she read in Reader's Digest, Sam and Don both laughing at how ladies just love their magazines. Don scans the crowd and sees men and women of all ages (but one color) smoking and laughing, and he wonders why he can't feel as happy as they all look.

Give me a great opening scene(*) and I'll stick with a show through a lot of faults. "Deadwood," for instance, had that amazing sequence where Bullock holds off a lynch mob so he can hang a horse thief under the banner of law, and because of that, I didn't get too worked up that I was having trouble keeping track of all the characters for the next few episodes. The "Mad Men" intro is so perfect in the way it takes you into its world and lays out all the series' key themes -- marketing, casual racism and sexism, the ennui that can come even when you have it all -- that I'll forgive the copier joke, or the fact that I figured out Don was married as soon as Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt, who was the best thing about "Standoff") suggests she'd make a good ex-wife.

(*) A kick-ass title sequence helps, and "Mad Men" has one, that sequence of Don's silhouette falling through various idealized illustrations of late '50s life before winding up seated in an art deco chair, his back turned to us, a cigarette dangling from his hand. Weiner says the idea came from director Alan Taylor, who took a look at Hamm and said, "Have you seen the back of this man's head? Have you seen what that is, what presence that is? Who is this person, this mystery?" (Note that the first time we see the flesh and blood Don, it's from that same vantage point.)

There's a lot to digest here, a lot of characters to meet, a lot of casually offensive dialogue to adjust to (I'm fond of Don telling Rachel Menken, "I'm not going to let a woman talk to me like this," but almost every line uttered by Pete and his cronies does the same trick), and Weiner uses the patented pilot device of My First Day At The New Job to smooth the transition, turning Moss's Peggy into our eyes and ears -- at least until she winds up inviting the engaged Pete into her apartment, the aftermath of which I'm grateful we didn't have to see nor hear.

A few other thoughts:

• Though a few characters come across as very broad here, I've now seen the first four episodes, and if the Pete spotlight in episode four is any indication, Weiner's going to get around to plumbing everyone's hidden depths by the end of the season.


• "It's Toasted" was an actual Lucky Strikes slogan, but one that dates back to 1917. Over the run of the series, Weiner's going to be playing a little loose with this area, using actual brands but either inventing new campaigns or giving Don credit for other men's work.


• Nice to see John Cullum as the Lucky Strikes boss, the first of some very cool guest-casting that the series will use. (Also, did you catch Mel from "Flight of the Conchords" as one of the switchboard operators? She's the one in the middle.)


• I really loved Peggy's visit to the judgemental, chain-smoking gynecologist. Just thought that warranted mention.

What did everybody else think?

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