Monday, November 9, 2009

Mad Men

Anyone feel like talking about the season now that the finale has aired?
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13 comments:

  1. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 11:51 AM

    I have lots to say but no time at the moment. Just passing through and saw your post, Rem.

    I'll come back to comment when I have more time. Just want to say that this was my favourite episode: so much pain, so much realization, so much regret, so much excitement for new beginnings.

    More to come. What a tremendous show! I'll miss it sorely until next season!

    At least there's still Dexter to sustain me...

    And, I must admit to most recently tuning into Brothers and Sisters, just to see the delectable Gilles Marini.

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  2. RemmiNovember 9, 2009 at 12:39 PM

    I can't wait for your full perspective M. What a compelling end to an interesting season. My heart aches for Don and I'm not sure that it should???

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  3. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 6:07 PM

    Here's a wonderful recap from Entertainment Weekly:

    The episode opened with a shot of Don — pale, sweaty, hacking like a nag — in a dead man's bed. His alarm didn't go off. (So much of Don's horrible trouble this season could be so summed up. Red flags waved everywhere, and he just barrelled right towards them.) Don might have risen from Gene's cot but it was Connie's curt dismissal that woke him out of his season-long stupor. The Brits were selling out, and were going to dropkick Sterling Cooper into a behemoth ad agency. The old man, another would-be father figure who crumpled him up like a sheet of paper, had no further use for him. Don prostituted himself for this man and Connie used him for kicks. ''That's why you called me son,'' Don hissed through his teeth, fighting to keep a tight smile on his face. Connie, that toxic old coot, delivered a smug speech about self-reliance. Don took a last look around the Waldorf suite before trudging back to his place of indentured servitude.

    It was time to wake Mr. Cooper from his fat, lazy lion nap. It was time to act. They needed to save themselves from ending up as disposable cogs at some huge corporate machine. ''Young men love risks because they can't imagine consequences,'' purred Mr. Cooper. ''And you old men love building golden tombs and sealing the rest of us in with you,'' Don shot back. Well, that got Bert's attention! Don reminded the old man that he built this company from the ground up 40 years ago and he could do it again. Ah, said Mr. C., then they needed Roger and his Lucky Strike account. (Damn you, Lee Garner Jr.!) Mr. Cooper hooked the silver fox by warning him that an early retirement would send a man like Roger to an early grave. ''Join or die?'' smirked Roger. One of the many tragedies this season has been the lost rapport between Roger and Don. Finally these two proud men were playing again for the same team. The mere sight of them bellied back up to that dark bar from seasons past put me in a drinking mood. Buzzkill! To his sincere chagrin Roger blurted out the news that Betty had hitched her wagon to Henry Francis.

    I'll get to the tragedy of that broken contract in a bit. If I had to endure the Drapers' final unraveling, at least it was offset by the heart-pumping fun of watching Don, Coop, and Roger wrest back their names before they were sold out from under them. Some viewers have complained that what this season spent too much time at home and neglected the work. They got a season's worth tonight! The whole story line proceeded with such zip and adrenaline, full of what felt like both brilliant surprises and a wonderful sense of inevitability as each piece of the puzzle fell into place. First the men had to get my prince Lane to join the side of right. The good man hesitated for a bit — what with his career of taking velvet glove blows to the chin from the powers that be. Don realized that Lane had the authority to fire them all, thereby releasing them from their contracts. He reminded Lane that he was dead weight to the company but could have his name on the door at their new agency. What a treat to see Lane decide once and for all that he was done being a stooge. The four men assumed their positions in a quadrant of power. They gnashed into their plans with boyish grins on their faces. They had the weekend to mount their insurgency. Game on.

    Next post: Don finally woos Peggy

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  4. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 6:08 PM

    Don and Roger went to enlist Pete, who looked every bit of 11 years old wearing his funny bangs and plaid bathrobe while playing sick in front of the Christmas tree. Pete was still fussy from the earlier slight of Ken's promotion and he needed to stamp his foot a little. (I loved Trudy in the bedroom, sending out a trilling reminder to her husband to keep his temper in check.) Don and Roger assumed Pete had started shoring up his accounts and they wanted him on their team. But first the boy wanted a love letter from Don. ''It's not hard for me to say Pete,'' Don told him in a magnanimous voice. ''You saw this coming, we didn't. In fact you've been ahead on a lot of things — aeronautics, teenagers, the negro market. We need you to keep us looking forward.'' It's stunning that the man who once tried to ruin Don by dredging up his secret past is now considered the voice of the future.) Pete wanted to be a partner. Pete wanted his name as part of the company title. Pete wanted a lobby. One out of three ain't bad. Once the deal was done and the deadline given, a stunned Pete was left home alone with Trudy. My vote for the most romantic moment of the whole season goes to these two, as they spun around their apartment. Pete bear-hugged his wife, giving her a nice, big wet one, before calling her to action. These two, against all odds, have somehow emerged as a wonderful team.

    If they win for romance, I'm going to say that Don and Peggy shared one of the most loving moments. I was so worried there for a bit when Don messed up. He told her to join him rather than asked her. He assumed she'd feel lucky. ''I don't want to make a career out of being there so you can kick me when you fail,'' she told him sadly. My word, do these two depend on each other as mirrors? (Was anyone else worried for just a second that she would spill their plans to Duck?) But later Don went to her apartment and spoke to her as an equal. Incidentally, it was a conversation that might have once saved his marriage. ''I've taken you for granted and I've been hard on you but only because I think I see you as an extension of myself,'' he said, chastened and subdued. ''And you're not.'' Peggy beautifully teared up when she wondered if Don would cut her forever out of his life if she turned down his offer. ''No,'' he said, his voice so full of respect and affection. ''I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you.'' I could die.

    We all knew it was coming but that didn't diminish the power of Joan's entrance. The problem with the assembled crew of power players was that nobody knew where the dice or the scorecards or the gameboard was kept. They needed a skirt, the skirt. So how brilliant when, at Roger's summoning, Joan showed up wearing the pants. She was back, she had a list, she had everything under control. My heart did a little flippety-flop when she and Roger acted like an old married couple around the kitchen table. ''Dear, I can't read your writing,'' said Roger, squinting through a pair of Grandpa bifocals. ''It's perfectly clear,'' she barked good-naturedly. ''Correspondence!'' Rounding out the scene was Peggy who with her little flip of hair looked every bit their daughter in this domestic scene. Except for the fact that she's forever done playing the ''nervous poodle'' of a girl. ''Peggy, can you get me some coffee?'' Roger asked without looking up. ''No,'' she snapped. Delightful.

    Next Post: Finding a new home

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  5. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 6:09 PM

    Save for a few moving clutches to her quivering brow, it was hard to feel much allegiance to Betty this episode. She had a lawyer. Well, good for you for taking Henry's hand and letting him lead you into his office. Henry wanted a quick divorce in Reno and he didn't want his dollface worrying over alimony. There was a telling moment after Don — who came scarily close to proving he was very much his father's son — grabbed a fistful of Betty's nightgown after learning of her relationship with Henry. ''Now I'm not good enough for some spoiled Main Line brat!'' he spat in her face. ''You're right!'' she yelled back. This divorce is, at least in part, because of the revelations of his past. Don, as drunk and ugly as we've ever seen Archie, sneered to his wife that was a slut. For a second I thought he was going to rape her but then the baby cried in the background. The baby's sobs snapped Don out of his rage. So much of this season has been about Don's origins story. Well here we were, back on that fateful night — the mean drunk, the whore, and their innocent baby. Except Don does not have to end up like his father.

    The parents were civil, if on wildly different pages, as they summoned to children to the sofa. ''What did we do?'' Bobby worried. Nothing, he was assured. ''Then why are we in the living room?'' Don told his children he was moving out but that it would only be temporary, like last time. Betty begged to differ. ''I'm not going, I'll just be living elsewhere,'' Don promised his kids. ''That's going,'' said Sally, her lisp in full and heartbreaking effect. ''You say things and you don't mean them and you can't just do that...You said you would always come home.'' Sally stormed off. Betty said to just let her go. Bobby wondered if the divorce was on account of the cuff links he lost and broke into tears. Bobby is around the same age Dick was the night he took a slug of moonshine and then watched his father take a death blow to the head. ''It ain't going to rain,'' Archie growled at his son before thunder spooked his horse. (''There will be fat years and there will be lean years, but it is going to rain...'') Bobby may be losing his innocence but at least he can do so with his arms and legs wrapped tight around his Daddy.

    Work once more is Don's salvation in his darkest hour. The gang purged their offices and accounts and set up shop in a suite at the Pierre. Joan was at the helm giving clear-headed instructions. When everyone broke for lunch around lovely Trudy in her silly turnip hat Don snuck into the bedroom to call his wife at home. ''Draper residence,'' she said. ''It's me,'' he told her. Oh, damn, this smarts. I rooted for you two. Don assured Betty that he wouldn't fight her on the divorce and she looked like she might cry again. I dare say, however much she had already started planning the new living room at the Francis residence, it broke what little was left of her heart to hear Don throw in the towel. ''You will always be their father,'' she promised.

    Next Post: Family ties

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  6. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 6:10 PM

    Don hung up the phone and walked back out onto such a scene of merriment and good humor that my heart swelled. Don is not alone. He has a roomful of good people to make him laugh and to make him better. Betty is not alone. We left her on a plane bound for a quickie divorce in Reno. She held tight to Baby Gene, her favorite child, as Henry sat officiously alongside her. A perfect little family of three. Even Sally and Bobby are not alone, as Carla smushed in between them on the sofa. At this point that woman is Sally's only hope. I almost feel worse for poor Paul Kinsey, who looked so stunned by the mass abandonment. Everybody left in the dark at Sterling Cooper hadn't made the cut for the dream team and were being left to fend for themselves. That's got to sting.

    ''I want to work,'' Don had told Mr. Cooper earlier in the episode. ''I want to build something on my own.'' Now he has his chance. So does his family of colleagues. Archie and Connie believe that it's every man for himself out there in this cruel world. One died broke, the other will die unloved by anyone not on his payroll. Neither of them could ever imagine the joy the folks of Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce are going to experience as the elevator climbs to their new crowded office on the fourth floor. So when we said goodbye to Don for the season, we did not leave him at the door of death (or some dotty teacher, thank God). We got a shot of his back, fedora firmly planted on his noggin, clutching his suitcase out front of some Christmas-light festooned brownstones. He looked like an innocent young man fresh to the city, full of the hope and energy that any new beginning demands. Go get 'em Don.

    The best line of the evening? Every damn thing that came out of Roger's mouth.

    And I woke the dog up with laughter when Mr. Cooper pleasantly warned Harry that he either join their team or spend the rest of the weekend locked in the storeroom closet.

    And then, of course, Lane's magnificent kiss-off to St. John: ''Very good. Happy Christmas!''

    Oh, and one more. ''Good Morning! Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. How may I help you? [pause] Yes Harry, it's Room 435.''

    Oh, friends. Did you just love it? Are you unused to watching the credits roll with such a glowing sense of uplift? Were there any other integral members of the Sterling Cooper crew you would have liked to see brought aboard? Whatever will we do as we wait for season 4?

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  7. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 6:56 PM

    And now, some of my thoughts:

    I too think that Betty is rushing into marriage with a man she hardly knows. Even though her cold personality and questionable parenting techniques hardly make her a sympathetic character and Don's philandering and deceit are odious, there is something about these two (who really should never have married each other) which makes us want to root for them.

    The most heartbreaking scenes were the ones with the children, left alone to watch mindless tv and to interpret the tragic turn their lives were about to take.

    I don't agree that Pete and Trudy are better than ever: their story has not yet developed. Just as much deceit there, with Pete and Peggy's illegitimate child.

    Roger and Joan should realize that they are the perfect match, not their current spouses.

    I'll add my voice to those who say they want Sal back and they want more episodes per season!

    Wonderful last scene, with them all in the hotel room, working as equals, treating each other like family.

    Just the thing Don Draper needs at the moment.

    Is there a better show on tv? I think not.

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  8. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 7:05 PM

    Sorry, one last article. Also from Entertainment Weekly.

    Part 1:

    Why are there going to be rave reviews of the season finale of Mad Men festooning the internet today? Because MM creator Matthew Weiner gave his fans what they’ve been dying for all season, even if they strenuously denied wanting it — that is, liveliness, jokes, action, and even the suggestion of a few plot-line resolutions.


    Yes, the marriage of Don and Betty took a turn toward dissolution. Yes, the children clung to the parent who occasionally shows them some semblance of affection. (That would be Don; I know it’s sometimes hard to tell with the Drapers.)

    But after all the agonizingly calibrated anguish that began this season with Sal’s love-that-dares-not-speak-its-name-in-1963 hotel scene, and continued on through Betty’s zombie-like attraction to a man who’s more like a safe father-figure than the safe father-figure she started being snippy with when her real father died, Mad Men finally had to get a little madcap in its season finale to keep us primed for its next batch of new episodes.

    The season-ender was directed by Weiner, and it turned out to be an extremely well-choreographed, wacky 1960s sitcom about starting an ad agency, with scenes of slamming-door farce set in the hotel room where the firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is taking shape. Instead of going the screw-the-viewers route his old boss David Sopranos Chase regularly travelled, Weiner brought back fan-faves, foremost among them Joan. (You know Sal cannot be far behind.)

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  9. MariannaNovember 9, 2009 at 7:06 PM

    Part 2:

    • The “Connie” Hilton subplot fizzled out rather miserably, the real-life-based character dispatched early on breaking the news of Sterling Cooper’s sale to Don. Don did what we knew he would: Make the speeches he wanted to make to his own dad but was never able to, condemning the old man (Hilton, that is) for coming on like a father-figure but never showing Don real love; asserting his Donnish maturity and independence.

    • Speaking of Don’s own father, we had to sit through a few flashbacks that, like nearly all MM flashbacks this season, looked and sounded like drafts of an unproduced Eugene O’Neill play. Young Don’s life was portrayed as a hillbilly caricature complete with a corked jug o’ moonshine. (Weiner seems to have gleaned his knowledge of lower-class rural life from old collections of Li’l Abner comic strips; it’s too bad he never lets Don’s subconscious stray enough to portray Betty as Daisy Mae… ) When the horse reared in the stable and knocked Dad unconscious, Weiner has by now programmed me to select the appropriate time-period song lyric. In this case, I heard Dean Martin singing, “Ain’t that a kick in the head… “

    Taken as a whole, the third season of Mad Men was one long day’s journey into night — that is, an extended, tragic meditation on the importance and fragility of mentorship (Roger’s of Don; Don’s of Peggy; Bert Cooper’s of the upper-tier ad-agency execs; Henry Francis’s of Betty) and identity politics (Don’s secret one; Sal’s furtive one; Pete’s and Peggy’s evolving ones; Betty’s despairing one; and, most broadly, the way in which the country’s identity was altered by the JFK assassination).

    But the fact that I’m laying this out so schematically is also what’s fundamentally unsatisfying about Mad Men: It’s constructed like a college course in psychological symbolism or literary analysis. Every character, every space they occupy (office; bedroom; restaurant), every prop is chosen not to simply be, but to represent something. That’s one reason why my colleagues in criticism love to write about it: The show is so much fun to deconstruct.

    The most adventurous image in Mad Men this season wasn’t a person but a painting: That Rothko abstract that loomed behind so many meetings in Bert Cooper’s office. (Early in the season, Cooper had been most proud of the Asian erotica he’d had mounted on his wall; last night, it was the Rothko, being moved out of the agency by moving-men, that provoked his concerned cry, “Did you wash your hands?”) Unlike the characters, Mark Rothko’s soft-cornered quadrants of color, painted under the influence of Nietzsche, represent freedom and struggle as triumphant endeavors.

    This is why my favorite characters from this season were Roger Sterling and Pete Campbell. Roger always provided much-needed humor in the most dour scenes, as well as the most realistic world-view: Unlike Don, he knows who he is, and has reached an age where he goes after what he wants (a younger wife; more power at work), no matter how foolish he may end up seeming. And Pete is a brainy ferret. Behind his pudding face lies a coiled-snake brain teeming with thoughts of ambition, fear, lust, and always-bubbling rage. Here’s hoping that the new firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (with the addition of “Campbell” in the company title a new goal for him) will find fresh ways to stoke the energy of Pete and all his colleagues next season.

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  10. RemmiNovember 11, 2009 at 11:20 AM

    Regarding your points M, I couldn't agree more. I love this show. I can't understand how I could possibly root for a marriage so visably doomed for failure but I do. Don's stoic exterior masks some seriously complex issues!! And Betty, where would I start!?!

    I knew Joan could not be gone for long. She is perfect for Roger. It will be interesting to see where they go with that potential storyline. As for Peggy, KUDOS to her. Who would have thought she had it in her. What a great couple of episodes for her. I cringe thinking about her romantic interludes with Duck and hope that's a thing of the past...YUCK!

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  11. MariannaNovember 11, 2009 at 3:40 PM

    Ah, yes, Remmi. Peggy's tentative foray into adulthood seemed to include the requisite getting of one's own apartment, severing the ties that bind (in a way only Jewish or Catholic mothers understand), and, sadly, having sordid afternoon trysts in hotel rooms with men who have no honorable intentions.

    Thank goodness Peggy's finally going to get a chance to gather her self-esteem and become an adult woman the proper way.

    Starting with refusing Roger's request for coffee service.

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  12. AnonymousNovember 14, 2009 at 10:51 AM

    I really do need to start watching this show!

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  13. decogirlNovember 25, 2009 at 3:47 PM

    Finally have a few minutes to contribute. Of course I am in withdrawal now that season 3 is done. I loved every minute of it. I pretty much agree with all your comments. Roger and Joan are my favorites. I've been wishing they'd get together since the episode in season 1 when they were at the Plaza Hotel together.

    Clearly Greg could be written out to go to Vietnam, but I don't see Jane walking away without a fight, especially if she figures out that it's been Joan he's loved all along. Should be interesting!

    I have mixed feelings about Don and Betty getting back together. Clearly she is hitching her wagon to another man she doesn't know. But I think that is realistic for a woman in that time. Here's a link to an interesting article I came across about Betty.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-miller/in-defense-of-betty-drape_b_360407.html

    I think Sally is a fantastic actress and she broke my heart several times this season. Bobby irritates me for some reason. I just think they didn't meet their usual standard of casting his character.

    Pete and Peggy... obviously more to come with those two. Funny to see them having to share a desk in the 'new office'. I think they have done a realistic job of portraying Peggy's struggles and I get why she would sleep with Duck. He appealed to her wish to be acknowledged for her work, which no one else (especially Don) ever did. The Hermes scarf didn't hurt either. She's just trying out what it feels like to behave like a man in a man's world.

    Will she drop Duck now? It could cost her dearly if she continues now that she's committed to Don. Trudy is not likely to go away, but I feel Pete and Peggy will only grow closer in the new firm.

    Anyway, it will be a long wait for Season 4. Sigh

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