Mad Men: The Wheel

 "You'll have to give back that copy of Ayn Rand..."

This is an interestingly brave, yet satisfying finale. We don't have the climaxes of last season- Peggy aside- as we end not with a dramatic peak but a satisfyingly relaxed wrapping up. This finale is all about families, none of them perfect.

This is obviously the case for Don, who never has one growing up and- as we found last week- feels semi-detached from his family, preferring to work rather than join them for Thanksgiving. Yet he has an epiphany of sorts in his presentation- brilliant as ever- for Kodak, using his own family snaps and getting a little emotional- a sublimely judged performance from Jon Hamm- at the thought of the family he has. Yet the scenes of his returning home, gathering his children in his arms and joining the family for Thanksgiving are shown just to be in his head; the reality is a cold, lonely house, all alone.

Betty finally realises, too, after Francine comes to her for help with her own husband's infidelity, that she's always known about Don's unfaithfulness and is finding it harder and harder to pretend. Then there's Pete, in his strained marriage, under pressure from his fayher-in-law to sire an heir. There's Harry, thrown out of his house after his dalliance last episode and sleeping in the office. Even Peggy's promotion to junior copywriter, a huge achievement for this quietly ambitious young woman- and another humiliation for Pete, who seems desperate to please a stern, uncaring father figure in Don- is followed by the shock of realising she's pregnant and about to give birth, a woman in a man's world after all. And, when shown her baby son, she turns her head away...

The Kodak Carousel may show a surface world of happy families. But they are nothing but.

Another season of Mad Men will be coming to this blog before too long. This is delicious, exquisite telly.

Mad Men: Nixon vs Kennedy

 "Mr Campbell, who cares?"

It's interesting that this should be the penultimate episode rather than the finale, seeing how it reaches a climax in a number of ways- including, I hope, for both Harry and Trudy, however deliciously awkward their morning after may be.

Sterling Cooper's unfortunate connection to the Nixon campaign allows a focus on the election night drama for that very close Kennedy. Yet, unlike in 2020, there genuinely is electoral fraud, although I understand the historical consensus is broadly that it didn't determine the outcome. Yet it feels strangely old-fashioned to see Nixon concede so gracefully. Of course, in those days, the Republican Party was an institution of the mainstream centre-right, and was in favour of freedom and democracy while opposing Russian authoritarianism. How times change.

The party is, of course, drunken, decadent, and full of inappropriate and sexist behaviour. Peggy, of course, leaves early, and endures a little light bullying. Yet I suspect, in the long run, she's going places.

The final act, though, has Pete using the info he's gleaned to try and blackmail Don. Don has a crisis of confidence- it's a brave and nuanced piece of writing to show this with him visiting Rachel and begging her to run away with him. As she rightly points out, this is cowardice, especially as he has kids he would seemingly abandon. We're allowed, here, to see Don at his weakest, and to see him propose to do something irredeemably contemptible. What matters is that he doesn't do this, and instead finds courage- but too late to salvage his affair with a disgusted Rachel. It's probably for the best.

Don's calling Pete's bluff is glorious, especially given how Bert Cooper's absolute indifference utterly humiliates him. Cooper is an admirer of the deluded fool Ayn Rand; he sees Don as a self-made man, a Nixon rather than an aristocratic Kennedy.

The coda is fascinating, even if Jon Hamm is perhaps a little too old to play the younger Don.We see how he passively accepts the identity of a dead lieutenant, receiving a free upgrade in social class, and leaves everything behind. Wow. This is brilliant telly, as ever.

Mad Men: Indian Summer

 "Just think about it deeply, then forget it. Then an idea will jump up in your face."

This is an episode about ambition. The central scene, of course, is about Roger's second heart attack as he's dragged in to placate big clients Lucky Strike, but the situatioin has admen and clents alike being very, very worried about Sterling Cooper. So Don, the undoubted talent, is made partner.

This leaves openings. Peggy gets another chance ("Maybe lightning will strike twice"), through the fog of casual sexism, to impress, using her talent for euphemism to its fullest. And, when asking for a raise from Don, she's advised not to be "timid"... and gets what she wanted. In direct contrast to Pete, whose blatant angling for a promotion gets him nowhere.

Peggy gets an orgasm though. Unlike the sexually frustrated Betty, who takes what she can from the washing machine as her husband works late and has an affair with Rachel who, in turn, is adjusting to the concept of being the "other woman" and what it means. All this is very gendered, and the affair is very much at Don's masculine convenience.

As ever, this is all subtly done, and superlative telly... but the suicide of Don'd brother is not; hanging is a drawn out and horrible way to go. And it's a resentful Pete who gets the parcel for Don...

Mad Men: Long Weekend

 "This is all there is..."

This is yet another multi-layered and multi-faceted episde of a drama with a lot going on, ending with Don facing a bit of a low-key existential crisis after Roger's heart attack. But essentially it's aboiut how society, certainly in 1960 but very much also today, expects women to be pleasing to men as men use them.

We see this first with Betty's widowed father and his new girlfriend who, to Betty's disgust, "lives to serve". It's revealing that Don says casually that it'll be "good to have another woman around the house, give Betty a break." But we also see this with Roger (and, passively, Don) abusing his power to hire some pretty young twins half his age, invite them to drinks, and then humiliate and sexualy use them while they fulfil theor roles of being pleasing. It's creepy to watch. We also see a kind of parallel as Joan and Carol (of whom more later) pick up two men; Joan snags the good one while Carol, stuck with the dud, just sighs and tells him to do "whatever you want".

And Don, distraught, instinctly goes to Rachel- a woman he respects, and who is not afraid to be firm with him- for succour. She doesn't yield meekly... but she yields. Althoigh not after getting some of Don's life story out of him. He's the son of a prostitute, raised by his dad, a client, and after his dad's death by his dad's wife and her new man. Bloody hell.

Even the exceptions are interesting. When Carol finally, drunkenly, confesses to Joan that she loves her ("Just think of me as a boy"), Joan pauses and pretends it never happens- and Carol goes along with it. Same sex attraction simply can't be mentioned.

And then there's Peggy, callimg out Pete on his entitled dickishness. She's going places.

This is simply an extraordinary bit of telly.

Mad Men: Shoot

 "I like this show. Very gay songs."

Once again, Mad Men gives us a devilishly clever forty-seven minutes of television. Ostensibly it's about a bigger, rival agency trying to poach Don from Sterling Cooper, unsuccessfully in the end, and the use of a modelling job for Betty as a quid pro quo. Yet it's so much more than that. It's about contemporary attitudes to women working and how they need the implied permission of their husbands, and how being at work is seen, unthinkingly, as neglecting her role as mother. It's all done with admirable subtlety.

Peggy, on the other hand, is now seeing the downside of her copywriting success, no longer seen as sexy now that she's a bluestocking- leading Pete to take extreme measures to defend his masculine definition of her "honour". And yet, in this man's world, Peggy seems to be confident she can go places, much to Joan's well-meaning bemusement. 

The ending, though, is clever, and not only pecause it makes the title a pun on both modelling and firing a shotgun, as she takes elegant revenge on at least one man who has dared to wrong her. This is wonderfully symbolic of something much deeper, and the perfect ending to an elegantly well-crafted episode.

Mad Men: The Hobo Code

 "There is no system. The universe is indifferent."

This episode is, at once, a deep character study of Don Draper and a fascinating exploration of ideas and ideals. It's the finest episode yet and a magnificent piece of television.

We see flashbacks, for the first time, of Don's loveless childhood, raised by adults who are not his parents and connecting to a free-spiriterd hobo (Father Phil from The Sopranos!) who is invited in for the night, but screwed out of money by Don's dishonest uncle. This shows us, perhaps, the origins of his broodiness and inability to get close to people. It's also fascinating to see him exposed to conttrasting belief systems. Cooper invites him to his inner sanctum for an unexpected bonus, as Bert extols the "virtues" of that simple-minded cretin Ayn Rand with her morally and intellectually vacuous drivel, Atlas Shrugged. Don, not being a gullible aristocrat like Cooper, politely demurs.

And yet he ends the episode unexxpectedly getting stoned(!) with his lover and her Beatnik mates from right out of a Kerouac novel. Again he is criticised for his profession by Bohemian wasters who are doing nothing constructive whatsoever to advance the causes they claim to bdelieve in, but instead just smoking weed and listening gto jazz all day. Don has the last word; he is no Beatnik but no Ayn Rand either. Wisely, he understands that the world is a chaotic and indifferent place. Echoing Existentialism and carving out his own meaning in a world whefre one is not provided, he is less shallow than either extreme. And, able to walk out stoned right past the police by virtue of his sharp suit, he is paradoxically exhibiting the freedom of the hobo.

There's more; Pete and Peggy shag, but he begins to exhibit troublingly controlling behaviour over her as his marriage may already be falling apart, essentially because Pete is an over-privileged man-child. Salvatore has a female admirer and also a male one, but is as yet unable to express his gay sexuality. And Peggy's copy, with assistance from a bravura performance from Don, goes across omne. Is she destined, as society starts to change, for bigger things?

Mad Men: Red in the Face

 "He doesn't even wear a hat!"

This extraordinary drama of bygone manners here turns its attention, in an oblique manner, to politics, as Sterling Cooper is set to handle Nixon's presidential campaign. Nixon va Kennedy is seen partly, as in the original meeting, as a clash of the generations. But it's also about social class: Betty is upset to see Helen Bishop in the supermarket and be accused of being a pervert after what happened with little Glen. You can nsymathise with her... but she slaps Helen and then proceeds to close ranks against the working single mother with her snooty friends, and to note that "I hate Kennedy" just to spite her. Wow.

There's still gender in the mix, though. Don gets a report from his pet Freudian quack on Betty and is told, with extraordinary masculine condescension towards Betty, that she has "the emotions of a child". Women are infantilised, yet the men drink enormous amounts on a weeknight, drive away while bladdered and behatted, and make inappropriate passes at their friends' wives- and Don blames Betty, over whom he has some power by dint of his gender, wen Roger, his boss and thus untouchable, makes a move on her. Ouch. Meanwhile, Pete's marriage is showing some very real cracks and he and Peggy are certainly attracted to each other.

This is a pre-Sixties world of hats, hard drinking and sexual harrassment. It all feels very secure. Yet, with Kennedy in the background and Peggy in the foreground, there may be the green shoots of something new. This is such perfectly observed telly.

Mad Men: Babylon

 "Mourning is just extendsed self-pity."

The title is clever. It relates to the ad campaign for Israel and Don's half-flirty, half vaguely racist decision to pursue lunch with Rachel because, well, she's Jewish, so she must know about Israel, right? But no; she's happily exiled in Babylon. Yet another kind of Babyon is on show, one of sin and adultery. Roger is having an affair with Joan. Don is avoiding sex with his actual wife and sleeping instead with his Bohemian girlfriend.

A lot is going on, as usual. Peggy hints that there may be substance to her, and gets a chance to write some copy, much to the disgust of Joan, who randomly alludes to Marshall McLuhan, of all people. Rachel may well acrually like Don, in spite of him being married. We get a flashback to Don's Depression childhood as Dick Whitman. Don ends up out of place in a Beatnik poetry place, where his profession is treated as a sell-out by pretentious jobless types.

There are lots of subtle moments about the characters and about the place and time in which they find themselves living. Not a lot actually happens, but that's not the point. And both the acting and the directing are utterly sumptuous.

Mad Men: 5G

 "I like being your medicine..."

It's an arresting title for a programme made in 2007, but even more arresting is the programme itself. Centred around the idea of a man's "executive" bank account is an examination of 1960 American man, his independence and his secrets. Done has plenty here. Peggy may discover that he's having an affair, but it's Joan who controls such infrmation and what's done with it- and her job as secretary is actually to help him cover it up.

Don has bigger secrets than that, though- or should I say Dick Whitman? His brother Adam is a simple but decent fellow, but Don is believed dead by his family and has reasons to be so desperate to cover up his own past that he bribes his own brother to say away... with money he can spend without Betty knowing. Wow.

Meanwhile, Ken is a published author... and all the other ad execs, fancying themselves as writers, are predictably jealous, saying a lot about the cultural cringe of advertising. And Pete is most jealous of all, so much so that he gets his wife to push for a story to be published... and is upset that she won't sleep with an old friend to do it. Again, wow. Men rule the world here, and it's tyranny.

I suspect neither Don's secrets nor Pete's marriage will last massively long. But this is bloody good stuff.

Mad Men: New Amsterdam

 "No job for a white man...!

I wouldn't have expected it, but Mad Men, that glacially and elegantly unfolding little visual serialised novel of life and manners of New York in 1960 turns out to devote an early chapter to that most un-American of subjects: social class. Well I never.

There's always been an undercurrent of class conflict to the talented and moody Don, a man with depth and soul yet a mysterious and deeply suppressed past, and Pete Campbell, a younger man who oozes the arrogance of entitlement. Here we have a nicely observed culmination of that conflict as Pete breaks the rules and steps on Don's toes, getting himself fired... only for it to be revealed that there is a deeper level of rules, and that certain aristocrats are needed to oil the wheels of posh New York society. The Pete Campbells of this world are unsackable, and the episode concludes with a tale of Pete's family connectrions to the Roosevelts.

We also find Betty connecting more to Helen, discovering the reason for her divorce and becoming the object of a rather cute crush from her young son. There's a class difference here, too, the camera (and nosy Betty) lingering on the notably less well-kept interiors of the house, and with Helen volunteering for the Kennedy campaign while it's implied that the Drapers are Republicans- this being 1960, when said party supported democracy and the rule of law.

This is slow yet fascinating telly.

Mad Men: Marriage of Figaro

 "He could be Batman for all we know..."

This is, of course, an episode about marriage, the monogamy that it represents. Hence Pete's return from honeymoon. Hence the varied conversations about temptation from both sexes. Hence Peggy accepting stoically that Pete is now forbidden goods. Hence the sudden awkwardness once Don sheepishly admits his marriage mere seconds after kissing Rachel like a proper Hollywood alpha male.Hence, indeed the downright evil whisperings aimed at poor, divorced Helen Bishop by the smug wives at the birthday party- and the arrogant assumption by a representative man that this makes her susceptible to transparent advances.

And yet this is also, I think, about how being part of a couple gives us an identity. It's 1960, so this is automatically the case for women, of course, not that we in 2022 are even close to shaking off the misogyny inherent in the tropes of marriage, which we still see as an "institution". There are variations, of course: Helen, in suburbia, is all but an outcast, laughed at for her habit of walking by lazy, car-addicted bitches. Yet Rachel, as a business woman, is defined by her work. Of course, she is also defined by other things, as a despicable anti-semitic comment at the party reminds us.

But it's also seen as central to a man's identity and dignity to be able to show himself to be married. Don has this, and so he can exist in a world where his past seems a bit murky and he is seen as just a little bit mysterious, the one with the camera looking at the party guests rather than truly being seen by others. And yet... an apparent stranger recognises hm as Dick Whitman. Who IS Don Draper?

This is bloody good.

Mad Men: Ladies' Room

 "What do women want...?

The second episode, while is does a lot of other stuff, rather cleverly examines the lot of women in the America of 1960 through the respective lenses of Peggy, continuing to settle in at the firm, and Betty Draper, whom we properly meet for the first time. Contrasting against them is Don's other woman, Bohemian and carefree to the point of throwing a television out of her window, but lacking any real connection to society, long term security or- so far, at least- even a name.

Peggy continues to run the gauntlet of constant male attention in a world in which casual sexual harassment and even groping is utterly normalised- the worldly-wise Joan takes it utterly for granted- and the only acceptable excuse to a man's advances is to claim to "belong" to someone. 

Meanwhile, Betty- whose name evokes Betty Friedan of The Feminine Mystique fame- is drowning in a life of suburban domesticity where the arrival across the road of- shock horror- a divorced woman is the subject for hushed gossip. It hardly seems surprising that she should have a nervous breakdown. Nor is Don's very contemporary resistance to her seeing a psychiatrist, given the stigma of mental illness- although, like a stopped clock being right twice a day, he sort of has a point in that this shrink seems to be a Freudian, and therefore a quack. And even when he relents, we learn that the shrink is reporting to him. Don, who is cheating on his docile wife, is subtly controlling her.

Oh, and there are a lot of women crying in the ladies...

There's also Don's evasiveness about his past, which is moving slowly towards the foreground. This is brilliant television, and it' very telling how well we know the characters after two episodes.

Mad Men: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

 "Now, try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology. It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use."

I've seen the first season of Mad Men before, but in 2008, before this blog was conceived. Revisiting this first episode has been fascinating, but the overall experience has been the same. This is bloody good.

In terms of plot, things are fairly simple- it's 1960, and Don Draper is a Madison Avenue ad executive known for his inspiration. On the surface he is charming and brilliant but, like many charismatic introverts, he has hidden depths, as hinted at most strongly in his conversation with Rachel Mencken, where he is phiposophical and she is perceptive, recognising another person living a life perhaps different from what one's origins may indicate. Essentially, he comes up with an advertising slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes, while Peggy has her first day- and sleeps with creepy Pete after his stag night. Then we see that Done- who is having an affair with a Bohemian girl with whom he connects- is married to a trophy wife with two kids.

Yet it's not about the plot, it's about the subtle (and blatant!) evocation of a mid-twentieth century, before the '60s started swinging, filled with all sorts of gender and racial norms, and attitudes that jump out at us, whether about smoking, women working or Jewish clients using Jewish firms. Don, as an advertising exec, has essentially a bullshit job, but with prestige. He's allowed to sleep in work time. Meanwhile, Peggy's doctor humiliates her when mansplaining about the pill.

The writing, acting and direction are all masterful. Let's see how the rest of the season goes.