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: 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: 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.