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: 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: 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: 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.