The Phantom: Thoughts on the Season Finale of Mad Men

"Are you alone?"

I had a feeling that there would be some discontent among the viewers of Mad Men when faced with the finale of Season Five, after such a breathtaking and momentous episode as last week's "Commissions and Fees," which saw the death of one character and featured startling and concrete change. Airing directly after, the season finale ("The Phantom"), written by Jonathan Igla and Matthew Weiner and directed by Matthew Weiner, could feel a bit anti-climactic.

To me, however, "The Phantom" offers a necessary coda for the fifth season, paying off the season's diverse themes and allowing the viewer to see the after-effects of the suicide of Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) on both Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and the firm as a whole, exploring the ways in which we seek out what we believe will offer us happiness--however temporary or fleeting--in order to assuage the rot inside us. Once we achieve the thing that we dreamed about and wanted so desperately, it's only then that we realize that it doesn't make us happy... or whole.

(Aside: A few weeks back, I discussed the notion that this season of Mad Men was less about a subtle manipulation of themes than it was a detour into outright symbolism. Where before the series had delved into subtext, Season Five was about making it part and parcel of the text itself. No longer would one need to take a deep dive in order to explore the hidden themes of a particular episode; they were there on the surface, sometimes spelled out without need of a critical compass or magnifying glass. Of course, some had complained that previously the show was too inscrutable, proving that you can't please everyone always. Thanks to Netflix, many new viewers came to the series during the long hiatus, and there's a sense that Season Five perhaps tried to be more generally accessible in ways that the previous seasons weren't. While I loved the first four seasons, I didn't hate Season Five and I don't think that the current season was somehow flawed for its efforts to shift the thematic underpinnings.)

As a whole, Season Five depicts the journey of Don Draper from his "love leave" and his honeymoon period to his return to form at the end of the season, the gathering darkness that has permeated the fifth season taking root inside his soul once more. Don's storyline in the episode revolves largely around the painfulness of life, symbolized by a "hot tooth" with which he is avoiding a confrontation. It's when he finally goes to see a dentist that he learns that he has an abscess. The tooth is rotten, threatening to overtake his jaw. He's rotting from the inside out and the only way to stave off the infection is to extract.

"It’s not your tooth that’s rotten." The notion of extraction lingers throughout the episode, from Don's surgical visit to the dentist--which leaves a single bloody tooth sitting next to him--to the temporary erasure of memory after electroshock therapy. There's a falseness to the determination of Beth Dawes (Alexis Bledel) when she believes that electroconvulsive therapy is a panacea for all of her problems. By extracting Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), she may be able to temporarily hold the dark clouds at bay, but her mental illness will return. She will remember again. Pete speaks of putting a bandage on an old wound, but he doesn't speak of the festering rot that can occur under the white expanse of a surgical band-aid. His idealized notion of escape--that they can somehow be happy together--separates him instantly from Beth, something he can't see before or after their hotel room tryst. Beth is trying to hold onto a piece of happiness; Pete is trying to recreate a fantasy that's separate from the own idyllic nature of his family life.

The "doom and gloom" that Trudy (Alison Brie) recalls has infected them all this season and Pete's visit to Beth in the hospital is a reminder once more of just how alone he truly is. He saw Beth as an escape hatch from his own personal troubles and is shocked when she doesn't even remember him in the hospital. He's become a stranger, a phantom who has materialized in her hospital room, unknown and unknowable. The possibility of happiness between them is as rotten as Don's tooth, a realization that the fantasy he concocted in his head--of Beth somehow rescuing him from the mundane routine of his existence--is as impossible to attain as a fairy tale. Like Don and Megan (Jessica Paré), he's Beast to her Beauty, but there is no happy ending here for either of them. Even the moment of happiness he had attained with Beth in the hotel room turns to ash when Howard (Jeff Clarke) tells him that she "spreads her legs" for anyone. That memory too becomes rotten to the core.

But just as we can't extract the pieces of ourselves that we don't like, rejecting that within us that turns to darkness and decay, we also can't fill the void within us. That dark, hungry maw is always craving another sacrifice, and the things that once sated us and kept that figurative darkness at bay can't fill the emptiness. Don looked into the void when he chased after Megan, coming face to face with a vast darkness as deep and dangerous as an elevator shaft. One misstep and you go plunging into the emptiness, loosing yourself and your life. But his decision to help Megan with her career, landing her the Beauty and the Beast shoe commercial, has the same effect in the end. When he sees her, surrounded by a production crew and almost glowing from within, Don leaves the light of the fabricated set to return to the darkness, stepping off the set, past the lights and the cameras, into the blank space of the studio and then directly into the hungry embrace of the darkness itself.

The honeymoon is most definitely over. Don is on his own again, and we get the sense that each of the characters in their own way is cast adrift in exile: Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) sits not in Paris, but in a shabby motel, gazing out not at a dramatic city view but something sordid and pedestrian; Roger (John Slattery) stands naked at his hotel window, high on LSD, without a guide to hold his hand or point the way; Pete cuts himself off from the world by silencing it, putting on his HiFi headphones and withdrawing into himself. And Don enters a darkened bar, where he's asked the same question that each of the characters ask themselves: "Are you alone?" His reply is unspoken, but the question itself also doesn't require an answer. We know that he and the others are alone. They attempt to establish some sort of emotional equilibrium by feeling "alive" for fleeting moments of joy through their respective vices: women, wine, work. But these things don't fill the emptiness within; "a temporary bandage on a permanent wound" that conceals rather than heals the true wound beneath the surface. Even Don attempts to dull his pain with alcohol, turning to a cotton ball soaked in whisky to treat his toothache. But the rot continues to fester in the darkness.

It's Don who wanders through the darkness of the night, a stranger appearing at a bar, a wanderer, a hungry ghost. He's one of the titular phantoms who turn up in the episode unannounced, bringing dark tidings. Even a chance encounter with Peggy at the cinema results in Don feeling solitary once again, remarking on her success and how proud he is of her, but acknowledging that he didn't know her advancement would come "without" him. Pete haunts Beth's life after her treatment, while Lane's empty chair at the partners' meeting contains not his ghost but an emptiness. Don's arrival to deliver a check to Lane's widow, Rebecca (Embeth Davidtz), is another haunting. Don's dead brother, Adam (Jay Paulson), is yet another, turning up unexpectedly wherever Don travels in the finale, a constant reminder of his failings to save both Lane and Adam from their respective suicides. Both die from hanging themselves, and both could have been saved if Don had read the clues they presented him. There is guilt there, eating away at Don from the inside, a darkness that can't be extracted with a tooth. It's fitting that it was Don who cut down Lane from his place of death last week, and who placed him on the couch, but it doesn't absolve him of a sense of culpability that may be nagging him as much as a physical toothache. (In losing his tooth, does Don also lose his bite?)

Joan (Christina Hendricks) feels some sense of guilt as well, wondering whether Lane would still be alive if she had given him what she believed he desired: herself. That too would have been a temporary bandage. Lane carried around a picture of someone else's girlfriend in his wallet, which Rebecca discovers after her husband's death and believes her to be his mistress, demanding her identity from Don. Likewise, Joan represented an oasis from Lane's life, but any sense that she would somehow make him feel complete is illusory. These things are distractions--Roger's entire existence is best summed up as the distraction of sex between reality--but they don't fix the problem, don't save any of them from the true issues at hand. They are alone in the darkness and those brief points of light may remind them that they are alive, but they also remind them afterwards of just how painful it is in the first place.

Megan is "an ungrateful little bitch" in the eyes of her mother, Marie (Julia Ormond), who also refuses to "care for" Roger when he asks her to do LSD with him, clearly looking for someone to share the experience. Marie's withholding nature has doomed her relationship to her husband, but also to Megan as well, and her advice to Don that he "nurse her though this defeat and [he] shall have the life" he desires is false guidance. If he lets Megan truly fail, there's a sense that she'll turn out to be Betty (January Jones), a failed model in a world filled with failed "ballerinas" as twisted and bitter as Marie herself, who transfers her own sense of failure onto her daughter. ("Not every little girl gets to do what they want," Marie says. "The world could not support that many ballerinas.") But in choosing to help Megan, Don also sees how easy it to get lost in the darkness. He chooses to cut himself off from Megan than remain by her side, basking in her reflected light. "Beauty" it seems is not enough, not anymore. The happiness he thought he could attain by marrying Megan hasn't resulted in the life Don envisioned.

There's a sense that the final scene of the season is a return to the Don that has been held at bay all season: someone who loses himself in sex and booze and who stays away from the wife at home in order to avoid confronting the pain. But running from a toothache doesn't negate it. Avoid it for too long and you risk losing an even bigger piece of yourself in the process.

Mad Men will return for a sixth season to AMC in 2013.

The Daily Beast: "Mad Men Season Five's 13 Most Memorable Moments"

Troubled Don! Ascendant Peggy! Poor Lane! Following the finale of a controversial season of Mad Men on Sunday night, I examine the 13 most memorable moments from its fifth season.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Mad Men Season Five's 13 Most Memorable Moments," in which I explore and analyze 13 of the fifth season's most memorable moments, including two from the season finale ("The Phantom").

Mad Men’s fifth season, which came to a close on Sunday, began with the joy and optimism felt by newlyweds Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Megan (Jessica Paré), only to slowly let in a narrative darkness that manifested itself in squandered dreams, hopeless enterprises, larceny, and even the death of a major character. Husbands and wives warred, ex-spouses sniped, children grew into adults, and partners fell out.

This all played out against a backdrop of monumental social and political change during which Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce hired its first African-American employee and gained its first female partner, though in both cases, there was an element of subterfuge rather than of progress. A joke ad stating that SCDP is an “equal opportunity employer” forced the partners to hire a black woman to be Don’s new secretary; Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) was made a partner, but only because she sold her body to land them the lucrative Jaguar account. There is a sense that these “advancements” only perpetuate the norms rather than shatter them.

But regardless of the reasons behind these developments, each represents change in its own way, and that is one of the many themes playing underneath the fifth season, including the ending of the mentor/protégé dynamic between Don and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who quit the firm to make her own way in the world. With an end date in mind for Mad Men (only two more seasons!), creator Matthew Weiner has shifted the drama into its final act before viewers’ eyes.

The 13 scenes below capture some of the most surprising, exciting, thrilling, or heartbreaking moments of the fifth season of Mad Men. WARNING: Proceed with caution if you are not completely up-to-date with Mad Men, as specific plots and narrative twists are discussed at length.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

Elegant Exits: Commissions and Fees on Mad Men

"Everything you think is going to make you happy just turns to crap."

If that's not a statement about Mad Men's major themes, I don't know what is. While it's outsider Glen Bishop (Marten Holden Weiner) who utters those words at the end of the episode, they could be said by just about any character on the drama, offering a prism through which to see that our expectations are often dashed against the rocks when faced with the reality of our situations. Happiness, as Don Draper (Jon Hamm) would argue, just begets more happiness, but more importantly, the sensation of happiness demands further happiness. It's elusive and short-lived and, as one gets older, the simple things that might have once made us joyful--driving a car, an illicit cup of coffee with tons of sugar--turn to ash in our mouths.

Happiness, it seems, is as much about anticipation as it is expectation. When things fail to match up to the ideal we set in our heads--an ideal established by Don and his ilk largely--such dissatisfaction can be wholly destructive: emotionally, psychologically, or even physically. The need for more--whatever more may be--might drive us, but it also can consume us in the end.

After a season that was at times almost heavy-handed with its death imagery, this week's episode of Mad Men ("Commissions and Fees"), written by Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton and directed by Chris Manley, finally paid off the swirling symbolism of mortality that was hovering uneasily over the ad men of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, resulting in an installment that examined the illusions of adulthood, from both the perspective of children standing at the cusp to the adults who had to come to terms with the consequences of their actions.

Let's be honest: there were few alternate ways that this could have played out for poor Lane Pryce (Jared Harris), who has had a sword of Damocles dangling over his head for much of the season. While he engaged in schemes intended to bail him out of his temporary financial situation, he committed greater and greater crimes, culminating in outright embezzlement and forgery in order to pay the taxman. Rather than bear the "indignity" of asking Don or the other partners for help, Lane tried to remain honorable while reducing himself to a criminal. The gentleman becomes nothing more than a common thief, though his techniques for larceny may have been more sophisticated than a pickpocket.

As for why Lane does it, it's all summed up in the brilliant scene between Don and Lane, in which Lane tries everything in his arsenal to prevent Don from demanding his resignation. He's defensive, hostile, angry, and finally he is resigned to his fate, a cup of liquid courage in his hand. The questions that pour from his lips are the questions that many of us would ask in the same situation: what will I tell my wife? What will I tell my son? For Lane, he's failed in his own mission, not just a quest for his own personal happiness, but he's brought on a situation where he will destroy the state of happiness for his own family. He's not one who can easily face shame or failure (remember how his father treated such scenarios in Season Four?) and rather than face up to his actions, he finds a way to escape.

It's Don who tells Lane to take the weekend before making an "elegant exit," but I don't think Don would have ever contemplated taking the exit that Lane does. In the cataclysmic scene between them, Don's advice applies to Don alone: he sees a resignation as a chance to start over, to reinvent himself as he has done time and time before, slipping out of one identity and into another. That is something that Lane, caught between cultures, nations, and temperaments, cannot do in any way. That's not "relief" that Lane feels when he says he's "lightheaded," but the effect of alcohol and terror.

Don doesn't understand how the rest of them live. Lane throws this in Don's face during his rage-filled speech, but it's also true, as well. The Drapers are so far removed from the harsh realities of workaday America in the 1960s that they might as well live atop Mount Olympus rather than in a high-rise pied a terre. For Lane, the loss of his job is the loss of his identity. He's survived on dreams of a different life, recasting himself as a lothario (that wallet portrait, his pass at Joan), a Mets fan, an American. But when faced with the horror of his actions and their after-effects--defeat, ignominy, loss of honor--he falls on his sword.

Or he tries to, anyway. Paying off the running joke this season that Jaguars are not reliable and that they sell you a toolbox along with the car because it breaks down constantly, Lane tries to kill himself by running a hose from the car's exhaust into the car... but the Jaguar fails to start, rendering his plans for naught. It's a bit of gallows humor that's in keeping with the sometimes off-kilter and dark nature of the show, one handled magnificently here, placing the object of Lane's intended demise front and center these past few episodes. It represents the dream of what he can't have, just as Joan does too: objects of beauty denied to him. Even though Rebecca (Embeth Davidtz) purchases one for him as a surprise present, she does so with a check, with money that they don't have. The chaste dream of Joan turns "obscene," their final conversation fueled by Joan's utter disgust at Lane, his by making Joan emblematic of everything he can't have in life. Any chance of happiness has turned to crap, as Glen might say.

After all, Lane is not Don at the end of the day. "I won’t settle for 50 percent of anything," a re-energized and hungry Don tells Ed Baxter (Ray Wise) during their meeting at Dow Chemical. "I want 100 percent." Lane wants 100 percent of happiness as well, but he knows he'll never get it. The castle of sand that he's built is crumbling down around him. When he fails to drown himself in alcohol and toxic fumes, he heads to his inner sanctum: his office at SCDP. It's only fitting that this is the scene of the crime and the resignation letter he writes is an indication that he's resigned himself from life, not just his job. That it's boilerplate is all the more heartbreaking: he has nothing else to say now that his entire identity has been co-opted from him. His final words are, as always, about work. The fee he's willing to pay is his mortal life.

(Aside: I can't help but think about whether Lane has the same life insurance benefits as Pete. Given that they've both been partners for two years now, Rebecca would be entitled to Lane's benefits, even in the case of suicide as Pete informed the viewer a few weeks ago. Could it be that Lane is worth more dead than alive?)

That Lane hangs himself is also telling, making his corpse an impediment to normalcy. Joan can't get the door to his office open because his body is in the way, a physical obstruction that derails the entire day. The sight of his corpse swaying in his office, alone and purple-faced, witnessed by Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and the others through the window is as much a warning as it is an ending: be careful what you wish for, be careful what you want.

It's Don who attempts to give Lane some semblance of dignity back, ordering that Pete cut him down, laying him down on a couch, as if he'd had too much to drink rather than ended his own life. They tidy Lane's office before making their own exits, as if trying to maintain the illusion of order and neatness amid the horror of what they've encountered, coming face to face not just with Lane's demise but also their own. Lane dies in the office because it's where he lived. He dies because of what the firm sells: the illusion of happiness.

That illusion permeates the entirety of the episode as well. Sally (Kiernan Shipka) pretends to be an adult, joining Megan (Jessica Paré) and her friend for coffee, indulging in gossip and "adult" talk, and later urging Glen to visit her in the city, where they take the morning to visit the Museum of Natural History, venturing across the park, dressed up in their finest. (Including those go-go boots that Don nixed from a few episodes ago.) They're playing as adults here, engaged in behavior that wouldn't normally appeal to two kids without parental supervision. But the fact remains that despite their trappings--Glen's mustache, for example--their steps into adulthood are illusory. When Sally takes that step towards becoming "a woman," she's terrified and regresses completely, literally running home to her mother's embrace.

It was quite nice, for a change, to see January Jones' Betty be kind to her daughter, to express sympathy and love, and to offer her advice about dealing with her period. Being an adult, according to Betty, means dealing with "responsibility," something that Lane is unable to do and this takes his own life. Sally might play at being a woman, dressing up and drinking coffee, but when faced with the reality that such a role entails--the physical price--she wants nothing more than to throw away the illusion.

Likewise, Glen might play at being a man, growing a mustache and telling the boys at school that he's going to go all the way with Sally--despite the fact that neither thinks of the other in "that way" (Glen says she's like his little sister, "only smarter")--but he too is still a child, teetering unsteadily on the cusp of adulthood. When asked what he would want to do more than anything, his answer reveals his innocence. He's driving a car, but he doesn't have to grab onto the true responsibility. In the end, Don is there, his hand firmly on the wheel, helping the boy steer.

On the season finale of Mad Men ("The Phantom"), opportunity is in the air for everyone and Pete meets a stranger on the train.

The Chain: The Other Women on Mad Men

"At last, something beautiful you can truly own."

At what price are we willing to sell our selves, our souls, our bodies? Is there a price or, for some, can we walk away knowing that we weren't able to be bought, no matter how much money was thrown into our faces? Or, for women in the 1960s, was there always someone who owned you outright, a pretty jaguar to be possessed whether you were wife or mistress?

This week's installment brought these issues to the forefront, rendering an episode that was largely about the heartbreakingly quotidian objectification of women in the 1960s, as Joan (Christina Hendricks) prostitutes herself for a shot at a named partnership at SDCP, Megan (Jessica Paré) is reduced to a piece of meat at an audition, and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) manages to leave Don after he literally throws money in her face. These three stories are threaded around the pitch for Jaguar, which itself deals in issues of objectification, ownership, and an easy misogyny that plays out in numerous ways.

While this week's episode of Mad Men ("The Other Woman"), written by Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner and directed by Phil Abraham, has some strangely clunky moments, it also contained a few of the best sequences on the show, moments of dramatic impact that harkened back to some of the strongest installments of the series, like "The Suitcase." But there was a heavy-handedness to some of the subplots (particularly Joan's) that was surprising to see: was this Faustian bargain really earned within the narrative? Perhaps if some of this had been planted earlier and finessed a little more, I could buy into it more readily, but I had a hard time accepting the reality of this turn, even as I was riveted by Christina Hendricks' and Jon Hamm's performances.

While the episode won me over in the end, as a completed work, I will admit that I was uneasy throughout my viewing. "The Other Woman" continued this season's trend of overt symbolism rather than more opaque subtext, putting the episode's themes under a spotlight with less subtlety than we've seen in the past. Perhaps this is a natural outgrowth within society itself, but for a show that has so diligently and deftly painted with the finest of brushstrokes, it is somewhat alarming to see Mad Men's writers hefting the themes onto the canvas with the imprecision of Jackson Pollock splatters.

Much of the series has revolved around the relationship between Don (Jon Hamm) and Peggy: the pilot episode occurs on her first day of work at the agency and over the course of five seasons their dynamic twists and changes, bending under stress, though there is a sense of resentment at times building up inside Peggy, especially the more she is reminded of the glass ceiling pressing against her head and the double standard that exists for her and Don.

It's only fitting in a series with a set end date (two more seasons after this one) that their relationship would be put to the test before long and that eventually Peggy would need to step out of Don's shadow and assert herself and her independence. For too long, Peggy has been indulging in complaining about everything, seething with resentment and frustration, and it was only a matter of time before she did the right thing and, in attempting to salvage what was left of their friendship, sought to leave the company and end her partnership with Don.

The scene that plays out between them is a masterful one, both an inversion of and a restatement of the dynamic that existed between them within "The Suitcase," a moment of unspoken emotion that sums up their dynamic and what they mean to one another. In "The Suitcase," it was a silent affirmation of friendship, as Don squeezes Peggy's hand, an acknowledgement of what passed between them, a symbol of both vulnerability and shared strength, an unbreakable bond based on knowledge, truth, and secrets. Here, this is again an explosion of emotion from Don, both rather than the grief he expressed in "The Suitcase," it begins with overt rage: that Peggy would defy him, that she would leave him, that she would cast off his mentorship and support. That she, in other words, refused to be owned or possessed by him.

Within the scene, Don undergoes all of the stages of grief, really, veering from bargaining (he views Peggy's letter of resignation as an attempt to gain a pay raise) to anger to finally acceptance. Once again, their bond is reduced to the unspoken. His parting gift, a tearful kiss on her hand as he nearly refuses to let go.

He does let go. Or rather, Peggy exerts her own freedom, refusing to be bought at any price. It's clear that the decision to leave Don--as emotionally fraught as any marital divorce--has its own price. Her tears, kept in check, signal the turmoil within her own heart, the weight of her decision, and of what it means that she is leaving Don for the unknown: a copy chief job at Cutler Gleason and Chaough. Don, not surprisingly, views her new employers as an attack on himself, not seeing that this isn't about him, but rather about Peggy and her own need for independence, something she will never have at SCDP.

When she says sadly, "Don't be a stranger," it's as much an invitation as it is an acknowledgement that these two know more about each other--the good things and the bad, the highs and the lows, the proud moments and the weak ones--than most human beings ever get the opportunity to know someone else. It's all the more heartbreaking because of what's passed between them but also symbolic of Peggy's own growth. Don threw a wad of cash in her face, treating her as nothing more than a whore who could be bought and owned for the right price. He's taken her for granted and forgotten that he doesn't own her, and that--as she tells him--he would do the same thing in her position.

I believed for a split-second that he wouldn't shake her hand when she extended it in a masculine farewell. His decision to kiss her hand both underpins his own internal devotion to her, but is also a reminder that she is a woman in the 1960s and that they can perhaps never be truly equals in their current situation. But that they both have to let go of each other if they want to survive. And there's triumph to be had when Peggy, smiling, steps into that elevator: she's not running away, but running towards something.

Peggy's inability to be bought is at odds with what the other women encounter within the episode. The overt immorality of the Jaguar ad is actually spelled out by Megan to Don, who chafes when presented with the notion that having a mistress is immoral in itself. Don himself subconsciously claims ownership of Megan, who has been rendered less independent and modern by dint of the fact that she's now dependent on Don for financial support. With that reliance on his coin comes certain understandings on his part: namely, that she won't jet off to Boston for three months if she lands a role in Little Murders, something he hadn't considered until that point. It's not just Peggy who experiences sensations of resentment. Megan tells Don, after she reveals that she didn't get the part, "If I have to choose between you and that, I'll choose you, but I'll hate you for it."

What that is is her attempt at becoming an actress, but she's seen as another commodity by the casting directors, who order her to turn around and show them her backside, rendering her as a piece of meat to be looked at, assessed, and visually possessed by the men in the room. Megan's friend indulges in crawling around on all fours on the SCDP conference room table, a literal Jaguar to be stared at and objectified by the male executives in the room. She's reduced to being a cat in every sense of the word, on display for the men's pleasure and amusement, an object, an animal, a thing.

But it's Joan who receives the harshest lesson of all, asked by Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) to prostitute herself in order to ensure that the agency lands the Jaguar account after Herb Rennet, the head of the Dealers Association, wants an evening with Joan as a way of improving their chances with the selection committee. That Herb would even suggest this notion--and that Pete would even consider it--reveals just how much worth they assign Joan and women in general. Even when Pete is presented with the hypothetical situation of what he would do if it were Trudy (Alison Brie) in that situation, he fails to see the negligible worth he assigns women, seeing them as pawns or accessories, tools necessary to get the job done at any cost.

It's telling that Lane tries to talk Joan out of accepting the $50,000 that Pete has offered her, but not because he has feelings for her (as she initially believes) but rather because he claims that she should be asking for more, because he once settled for less than he needed. In truth, that's perhaps part of it, but Lane is also trying to cover his own malfeasance: he can't pay out $50,000 to Joan because the company doesn't have the money and he's already taken out an additional line of credit with the bank without informing anyone. By borrowing against the future earnings of the company, he's hoping to offset their current financial crisis without signaling to anyone just how dire things are for him personally and for the firm itself.

But Joan does listen to Lane, at least when it comes to her fee, demanding a 5 percent named partnership stake in the firm, a sizable promotion that makes her the first female partner at SCDP, though all she had to do was sleep with a client to get the position. Her moral revulsion is pushed down because it would ensure both her and Kevin's financial safety for years to come and because she believes that she has no choice in the matter: the male partners decided.

Joan has used her sexuality as a weapon in the past, and it's not the first time that it's been used against her. She's found a price at which she's willing to sell herself, seeing it as a stepping stone to security even as it fills her with resentment and anger. The scene between her and Don at her apartment, in which he urges her not to go through with it, that it's not "worth it," comes too late. Played out of sequence, it's only later that the audience realizes that she has already slept with Herb, rendering Don's words meaningless. But the way in which she sees Don does change, as she realizes that he abstained from the vote and the partners made their decision with him. The touch of her hand on his face, the realization that he's one of the "good ones" (or as good as most men in this era could be) make her decision all the more heartbreaking.

The necklace that Herb fastens around Joan's neck--an emerald pendant as perhaps a gift or a reminder of her service--is more than mere trinket: it's a chain that reminds her of the fact that she is a possession to be used at will, whether by Herb, her ex-husband, or her employers. She's imprisoned by her decision in a gilded cage of her own making. She might have gained more power in the office for giving up her body to be used, but the chain reminds us--and sadly Joan, who packs in away in a drawer, trying to put it out of sight--of just how much of an object she is... and how far we've truly come.

On the next episode of Mad Men ("Commissions and Fees"), Don follows a surprising lead and Sally goes out.

Enterprise: Dancing Around the Issue on Mad Men

"You used to love your work."

One of the thematic ribbons running through Mad Men has been the notion of how one either balances their work and home lives, attempts to merge them, or jeopardizes one through the pursuit of the other. Work is, well, work. It's something that might define us--especially several of the characters on Mad Men--but is also a means to an end ("That's what the money is for!") in terms of both financial stability, security, and glory. The modern hero's quest, one could argue, is a capitalist one: the accumulation of wealth and fame the end goal, things like family and relationships the necessary sacrifices along the way.

On this week's episode of Mad Men ("Christmas Waltz"), written by Victor Levin and Matthew Weiner and directed By: Michael Uppendahl, the entire episode largely revolved around the notion of enterprise, both in a literal and figurative sense, with several characters engaged in risky, speculative behavior that may or may not backfire magnificently. (The episode also offered a return to form after last week's disappointing "Dark Shadows." I wasn't able to review the episode due to the intrusion of other work--aha!--as I was covering the network upfronts all last week, but this week's installment was better realized, I felt, and less obvious and on the nose as last week's.)

For Don Draper (Jon Hamm), much of his life has revolved around the professional sphere, and he attempted to fuse his work and home lives together by bringing Megan (Jessica Paré) more fully into his world, giving her opportunities that many could only dream of: a highly sought after position as a copywriter at a top agency, flexible hours (she was married to the boss after all), and the ability to work alongside her husband during the day. Megan's disinterest in this world, and what Don views as her rejection of its ideals and potential, continues to drive a wedge between the couple, as seen at the beginning of "Christmas Waltz." As Don steps further into Megan's world--an outing to see the play American Hurrah, with its anti-consumerist (and specifically anti-television advertising) messages--he's frequently reminded of the fact that she turned away from his. "No one's made a stronger stand against advertising than you," he tells her, bitterly.

Because Don's view of himself is inexorably linked to that of work, he sees Megan's rejection of advertising as a larger rejection of himself. Because work and identity are so intertwined in his perception, they're inseparable. An attack on one is an attack on the other. Picking up a dinner check for a friend of Megan's who has just insulted his profession is anathema to Don, despite his ease with denigrating acting as a profession. Perhaps, quite possibly, because Don doesn't see acting as a true enterprise. He's been "acting" his entire life but it's been for self-survival, rather than for a check. He can't shrug off his identity as easily as the actors in American Hurrah after the show. He lives and breathes the role every day.

The crack that Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) makes ("Yes, you may have to stay past 5:30.") rankles not only because it's emanating from Pete, but also because it's a reminder of what's been lost: Don and Megan would frequently head out early to spend the evening together but, as we see within "Christmas Waltz," they're increasingly living separate lives... and the speech that Don gives at the end of the episode, a St. Crispin's Day-style oration for the Madison Avenue set, underpins this even further: he's not only willing to sacrifice his evenings, but his weekends to the Jaguar campaign and therefore to the larger stability of the agency itself. No more early evenings, no more midday rendezvouses with his young wife: Don recommits himself to one aspect of his life over the other, and it's telling that the sacrifice occurs after Megan angrily slams a plate of dinner against the wall when Don stumbles home, drunk, after his afternoon with Joan (Christina Hendricks). Marriage, it seems, is an enterprise as well.

Elsewhere, it's Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) who is engaged in a highly risky enterprise of his own. After learning that he owes the Inland Revenue £2900, Lane engages in theft, deceit, and outright larceny in order to pay off the taxes he owes the British government, lying to Rebecca (Embeth Davidtz) about why he needs her to stay in New York for Christmas, borrowing a further $50,000 from the bank in order to pretend there are surplus funds and SCDP can afford to pay out Christmas bonuses to the employees, and then forging Don's signature on a check in order to pay off the debt when he learns that the partners (and junior partners) will wait until January to take their bonuses.

But Lane's sense of enterprising spirit comes at a series of steep costs, both financially and spiritually. His lies accumulate, as does his guilt and his crimes. A white lie to protect Rebecca from the truth is one thing, but lying to the bank, the partners, the employees, and possibly to himself is another. And just when he thinks he's in the clear, there's another cost, another debt to be paid. (Here, it even materializes as the fee for his tax lawyer, which Lane puts off until after the new year.) To echo the words of Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis), newly attuned to Krishna consciousness, money solves today's problems. (It's something that John Slattery's Roger ought to understand as well: his efforts to support the child he had with Joan are rejected outright, despite his insistence that he supports Kevin through college. He sees Joan as more mercenary than she is, reading her anger as irritation that Roger's ex-wife will get a chunk of his finances in the divorce. She sees Roger's financial input as a means of control and of ownership over both Kevin and her.)

What Lane doesn't realize is that, due to his financial slight of hand, there will be bigger debts to pay later, even if he's dodged the financial guillotine for now. Paying today doesn't mean that the consequences won't catch up to you later. If anything, Lane has stumbled into even deeper quicksand. (I feel quite bad for Lane, even as he engages in outright fraud. It's about more than just financial stability: it's a matter of honor, and he's willing to break whatever rules he has to in order to maintain the illusion that he's keeping everything together.)

Whatever latest cause Kinsey espouses, there's likely to be a woman in the mix as well, whether it be the civil rights movement or Krishna consciousness. And sure, enough, even in this situation--with Kinsey flunking out of advertising and into the yellow robes of a Hare Krishna recruiter--there's a female angle to be worked. (Getting into women's pants by devoting himself to various causes is his version of enterprise, if we're being honest.) Lakshmi (Anna Wood), however, has her own agenda, one that doesn't involve Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), Kinsey's terrible Star Trek spec script (the literal Enterprise here), or Hollywood connections. She sleeps with Harry in an effort to get him to stay away from Kinsey and when he rejects the notion that she has anything else to offer him, she slugs him.

Is Harry's effort to help Kinsey, even though he knows he will fail in Hollywood, really offering him a lifeline? Or is it further pushing him down the rabbit role? For all of Kinsey's talk about rejecting material possessions and consumerism (he would fall in line with the characters in American Hurrah on the surface), he's still looking for elusive fame and fortune, seeing the spec script as an important work but also as a stepping stone to professional advancement, leveraging his friendship with Harry to push himself in another direction altogether.

Kinsey's enterprising ways--luring Harry to a Hare Krishna meeting, preying on his vulnerabilities and generosity, as well as their friendship--backfire spectacularly here. He's given $500 and a bus ticket, and told to pursue his dreams in Los Angeles. In this scenario, both Kinsey and Harry are using money to solve today's problems as well: Harry gets rid of Kinsey, and Kinsey is bought off with promises of success. While Harry may have freed Kinsey from the clutches of Lakshmi, he's sent him on a collision course with a rude awakening in Hollywood. $500 might pay for today, but it's not paying for tomorrow. His final words sting the most: "All these people said they'd do something for me and you're the first one who did." Ouch.

While I was thrilled to see the return of Kinsey--and certainly didn't expect him to turn him in quite the way that he did--there was something about the Harry/Kinsey storyline here that didn't quite coalesce completely. I can't put my finger on it precisely, but in retrospect, it didn't entirely come together for me.

I did, however, love the entire sequence between Don and Joan, as they test out a Jaguar (posing as a deliriously happy couple), drink the afternoon away at a bar, and engage in the sort of intellectual flirting that the show does best. (Joan's cool but sultry composure here is at odds with the fiery display she put on after being served divorce papers in SCDP's lobby, where she threw a model of an airplane at the ditzy receptionist.) The two discuss starting over after divorce and reminisce about the past, particularly how Don was terrified of Joan and how she was always being offered up flowers by her suitors, who didn't include Don. "My mother raised me to be admired," she trills in pitch-perfect Joan-speak. Joan is, let's be honest, used to being admired, but she's lost her self-confidence. It isn't as easy as walking through a crowded bar anymore. She is now a single mother and wonders just when she brings that up on the first date.

Don and Joan's easy intimacy is the result of years of familiarity, and Don's chivalry here (offering Joan both an escape route from the office and his coat) is the perfect antidote to her malaise and anger. Just as she accuses Roger of moving on to the next girl after he tries to financial support their child, he turns the tables on her: how many times has he left her alone with a card from another man? Has her own enterprising ways, collecting suitors, led her to a landscape where she is raising her child alone? It's interesting that what Joan sees as her marriage's failing--Greg (Sam Page) choosing to be away from his family rather than with them--is the choice that Don largely makes at the end of the episode as well, choosing work over home, profession over personal, career over marriage.

Don might not feel anything from the quivering red Jaguar, but it's not, as Joan guesses, because he's happy. Perhaps, it's because he's not: no longer happy at work nor at home, Don is becoming desperate to feel something again, a connection that's overtly missing from his experience in the Jaguar as he returns it. Even his lack of emotional register when Megan throws a tantrum and orders him to sit down and eat with her signals a deep disconnection from the world around him.

But when he does rally, Don chooses one enterprise over the other, opting to commit fully to the agency rather than his marriage. The flowers he sends aren't to his wife, but to Joan in the end, as he jokingly positions himself as "Ali Khan," Romantic play-acting from a man who had been living without pretense of late. Don's decision is an admission that there will be more late nights and working weekends to come, more missed dinners and further distance between himself and Megan, with whom he's growing increasingly estranged. Both endeavors have their own set of risks, but in choosing one over the other, Don perhaps subconsciously admits that--for him--work (or, in the abstract sense, money itself) may not solve tomorrow's problems, but it might just offer a distraction from today's.

On the next episode of Mad Men ("The Other Woman"), Don is challenged by a pitch and Peggy contemplates a trip.

Other People's Lives: Lady Lazarus on Mad Men

“You’re everything I hoped you’d be.”

It's easy to construct an elaborate fantasy in our heads about who we are or what we want. It's even easier to apply that fantasy to the people around us, particularly our spouses, to imagine that they're the individuals that we believe them to be: glittering paragons of ideals and loyalty, intelligence and honor, determination and resolve. We see them as the best and most perfect aspects of ourselves because we want to.

Those people shape our own perception of the world, existing as concrete foundations in our false notion of "reality," seemingly never shifting or changing. But when they do, when faced with reality and the knowledge that they're perhaps not the people we thought them to be, it's as much of an existential crisis as learning you're not who you thought you were or came from where you believed.

In this week's stunning episode of Mad Men ("Lady Lazarus"), written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Phil Abraham, that's precisely what happens to Don Draper (Jon Hamm), as he's forced to confront the fact that Megan (Jessica Paré) isn't who he thought she was. Megan's words to Don in the kitchen of the Manhattan apartment they share echoed sharply here: he is everything she hoped he would be. But in confessing her dreams to Don--that she wants to quit advertising and pursue acting again--the scales have fallen from Don's eyes; Megan isn't everything he hoped she'd be. She's falling into another pattern altogether.

It's Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) who discuss the notion of how Betty (January Jones) fits into this pattern: Don met her, after all, during a print shoot and she was a model before he made her the first Mrs. Draper. Megan is far more modern and independent than Betty ever was, but her aspirations cast her in a similar light, putting the "second wife" as another in a string of similar relationships, according to the two women. Megan's hesitation last week to celebrate landing the Heinz account so effortlessly was due to the fact that she doesn't enjoy her job, no matter how great she might be at it. She wants, as she's wanted since she was a "little girl," to be an actress. What she doesn't realize is how well her acting skills were utilized within her job: in both cases of the Cool Whip "commercial" and the story she spun for Heinz, she embodied a character other than herself for dramatic effect, pulling on another identity and casting it off minutes later. (The entire notion of shifting identity, however, should be understood at some level by Don: he's reinvented himself so many times that he doesn't even resemble Dick Whitman anymore.)

Megan's entire conversation with Don, in which she wakes him in the middle of the night to confess her sins (after prompting from Peggy), sets the two up less as husband and wife and more as father and daughter. The language of their encounter deeply signals this shift, with Megan set up as a worried daughter asking her father permission to pursue her dreams, telling him that she's wanted this since she was a little girl. (It's also telling that Megan uses her maiden name to book the audition callback.) It's a subtle shift in the nature of their marriage: until now, the two had been portrayed as largely a partnership, working together, living together as adults. But the linguistic cues here demonstrate the crack forming in the foundation, as Megan positions herself as somehow less solid and adult as Don, more prone to childish dreams and whims, less practical and formed. She can't remember why she gave up acting in the first place. The answer: because she needed to pay the bills, which is why, when we meet Megan in Season Four of Mad Men, she's working as a receptionist at SCDP.

It's easy to pursue your dreams when you have someone bankrolling your efforts, whether that's a parent or a spouse. Megan's ability to reach for stardom--to imagine herself on Broadway or Off-Broadway--is fairly flexible when you have the means of pursuing it full-time, without concern for how your'll pay for your next lunch or your rent. But the shift from independent career woman to having her lifestyle financed by her husband also manifests in a physical way as well: after her confession and her departure from SDCP, Megan is presented as far younger than she has been all season: her clothes change, her hair is worn casually in a ponytail, her makeup is toned down. She seems more innocent and youthful than Megan the Copywriter did. She seems positively buoyant.

Don does not seem buoyant. In fact, in one of the episode's most startling moments, he nearly plummets down an open elevator shaft at the Time-Life Building. He's going down, just as Megan is seemingly achieving lift-off.

Don saw their marriage as a strong partnership of "equals," and relished the ability to go to work with Megan, to discuss what he does for a living with honesty and excitement. His dream, growing up in the 1930s, as he tells Roger (John Slattery) was "indoor plumbing." He's far more practical than his new wife, far less prone to pursue dreams (though he did pursue the American Dream at one point). He fell into his present career after doing some copy writing for the furrier he worked for; he never grew up believing or dreaming that he would be an ad man. But Megan is connected to the world, to the energy and passion that exists within the youth-dominated culture of the 1960s: she's plugged into the music and the culture in a way that Don isn't and will never be. She gives him The Beatles' "Revolver" album; he stops the needle after just a few minutes. "But listen to the colour of your dreams"? Impossible for Don, it seems, even as he admits to Roger that he rather Megan pursue hers, lest she end up like Betty or her mother.

It's easy, however, to look into someone else's life and tell them simply what they should be doing, rendering their decisions as simple somehow, that a mere "taste" of someone's problems can somehow give us a complete understanding. Peggy's conversation in the ladies' room with Megan conjures this up instantly. Peggy reacts how she would react when faced with the dilemma in front of Megan, seeing not Megan's own dreams or issues as significant of debate. If she doesn't want the job, she should leave, as she's taking the spot from someone who wants to be there. But, later, Peggy accepts Megan's decision graciously, seeing herself as the mentor who is allowing Megan to leave the nest. That relationship is echoed in Megan's words to Peggy, thanking Peggy for everything she's done for her thus far. It's a conversation that is interesting because it's occurring between two women in 1966: their dynamic is that of mentor/student, putting Peggy once again in a role typically occupied by Don Draper.

But, later at the Cool Whip taste test, Peggy subtly shifts into the role of "mother" to Megan. Her argument with Don plays out as it would between a married couple whose daughter has run away; the language here reflects that notion as Don lashes out at Peggy for pushing Megan away. It's only when Peggy snaps, shouting at Don, "You’re not mad at me. So shut up." These two can't even play-act as spouses, their banter awkward and forced, their lines out of order or garbled altogether, yet they are perhaps a truer partnership now than that of Don and Megan, two halves of the same person, existing in the same world, with the same outlook.

Which is not to say that Peggy is a replacement for Megan, but she too sees the failings of Megan to live up to the expectations. Just as Don saw Megan as a different sort of wife, so too did Peggy see her as a different wife for Don, that he had made a different choice, selected a different partner than the vapid failed actress/model. It's all the more frustrating because Peggy's actions precipitate Megan's decisions, both in terms of the conversation in the ladies' room and the way she is forced between the two spouses when Don calls the office looking for Megan. (Her knee-jerk "Pizza House" response on the second call was hysterical, unexpected, and resulted in me rewinding to hear it all over again. Genius.) Joan's response to Megan's departure: "That’s the kind of girl Don marries."

We can't even really step into someone else's shoes, to borrow a popular idiom. Our perception of other people's lives is limited by our own cognitive reflexes, our own experiences and character. Don, at the end of the episode, is alone in an empty apartment, a visual callback to the earlier scene in which he's waiting at home for Megan; he's essentially become the vigilant spouse at home, an about-face from the Don Draper we met in the pilot episode. But now he's the one at home, waiting for his spouse. Yet Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) sees Don as having everything, while he himself has "nothing."

That "nothing" would include a dutiful wife in Trudy (Allison Brie), a house is Cos Cob, a brilliant career, a stable environment. But he's afflicted with both an ennuie and potentially a death wish. Weiner and Co. have not too subtly been swirling death imagery around Pete all season long, with the returning callback to the rifle he still owns, his aging process, and now the outward mention of suicide, here turning up in a conversation about insurance with Howard (Jeff Clarke). While it's Don who escapes a brush with death in this episode (that elevator shaft, again), it's Pete that I'm far more concerned about, as he embarks on a journey of self-destruction.

While he's still set up as a bit of a joke (the physical gag of the skis comes to mind) and more than a little bit of a prat, Pete seems intent on immolating the life he's acquired for himself, on destroying the dream of 1960s suburban idyll that he embodies; his own dream achieved, he feels compelled to trade it in for something else, realizing that the lure of happiness was a false one.

Pete expresses shock at Howard's behavior towards his mistress ("Aren't you worried you're going to get caught?"), even though he himself contemplated having an affair with a teenager and even visited a prostitute recently. But it's the formality of the arrangement that seems shocking to Pete: that Howard should purchase an apartment and install his mistress there, right under the nose of his wife.

But Pete comes face to face with Howard's wife Beth (Gilmore Girls' Alexis Bledel) and they have a torrential one-night stand in the living room of the house she shares with Howard. Pete instantly casts her in his own fantasy, seeing her as the neglected wife who needs rescuing, seeing himself as a white knight who will woo her with trysts in Manhattan hotel rooms. He might step into her house and ride the train with her husband, but he's no closer to understanding Beth or her life than he is Don. He's a tourist in her life, an unexpected visitor, the bad penny who keeps turning up.

And he does turn up again, getting Howard to invite him over to his house so he has an excuse to see Beth again, stealing a kiss with her while Howard messes around with actuarial books. Is Pete that unhappy with Trudy? With his life? Or is he looking, like Megan, to cast off reality and replace it with fantasy, to connect to something other than his own identity, the constructs in his life? On the road to oblivion, is he seeking some warmth along the way?

Despite his proclivities, it's hard not to feel somewhat bad for Pete here, with his attempted assignation with Beth a monumental failure (he throws the coupe glass against the wall in a silent demonstration of futile rage) and his inability to let go of the fantasy when he's presented with such promises as a heart drawn against the steamed-up glass of her car, as her husband drives her away. Pete has a wife of his own, a life of his own, but he's stirred up by the potential that Beth represents, the illicit excitement and thrill of the pursuit, and perhaps the sensation that he's reconnecting to a lost piece of himself, a missing vestige of his own past, a key to the doorway of youth once more.

Turn off your mind relax and float down stream
It is not dying, it is not dying

Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void,
It is shining, it is shining.

Pete and Beth's tryst can never happen again; it may have fulfilled some need within Beth to regain that "reckless" aspect of herself long thought gone, but she's not willing to embark on an affair with Pete Campbell. Lying there on the floor of the living room, she compliments him on the blue of his irises, the deep well of blue that they offer, but there's a tragic element to the scene and to Pete himself. Pete's eyes may be as large and blue as the earth in space, but it's that image that connects him to the sense of isolation and exposure that Beth discusses in relation to those images. I fear for the entropy embedded within Pete's character, the uncertainty, the search for a missing variable. He's a man without a dream, out of touch with the world around him, desperate for something to anchor him. Because, in the end, Pete--rather like Don (or maybe even like all of us)--is floating alone in the darkness, orbiting beautiful, bright things, but never able to change his plotted course.

On the next episode of Mad Men ("Dark Shadows"), Don becomes competitive and Roger seeks new business; Sally faces a challenge.

Future Perfect: Doomed Expectations on Mad Men

"Some things never change."

And some things do.

This week's fantastic episode of Mad Men ("At the Codfish Ball"), written by Jonathan Igla and directed by Michael Uppendahl, had its eye on the future, with several characters contemplating the shifting mores of 1966 as they--and the viewers--were confronted by traditional values rubbing against modernity.

But, as the episode itself depicts, things do change and they have to. Society may march on with some of those rigid structures intact but with it comes progress as well, and the sense of change and of the future is embodied in the characters of Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), Megan (Jessica Paré), and Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) here, each of whom undergoes a transformation of sorts (whether physical, psychological, or social) before the installment ends.

The entire notion of the campaign envisioned by Megan toys with the notion that certain things never really change, whether it be spaghetti, beans, or a mother cooking dinner for her child. The structure of the campaign posits that shifting cultures and times--from the prehistoric to the futuristic--don't diminish certain foundations, relationships, or eventualities. Children need to eat, parents need to feed them. The earth--and the moon--keep on turning.

That this becomes the thing that saves the Heinz account (and, as a result, potentially SCDP as well) is crucial, particularly because it's not only Megan who dreams up the campaign, even with a better tag than the one that Don (Jon Hamm) envisions, but who saves the day by warning Don that they're about to be fired and dinner and then provokes him into pitching Raymond (John Sloman) right there with the timeline idea. While Megan allows Don to take the credit for the campaign--at least in front of the client--it's down to her that they're able to transform their luck. But Megan is more than mere good luck charm; she's the brains behind the idea itself. She's more than just the holder of the purse, collector of business cards, the one who gets to whisper, "Get 'em, tiger" before her man enters the ring.

It's exciting to see Don paired with someone who is so well integrated into his world, who understands his business and his methodology, who sees the value of what he does and enjoys doing it with him as well. Megan is certainly the polar opposite of Betty in this respect, a wife who goes with him to the office and engages with the material with as much vigor and intelligence as himself. Her shower reveries aren't of frocks or furniture, but of campaigns. It doesn't make Megan any less feminine or wifely in the traditional sense (after all, we're reminded that she decorated the apartment, and she goes on a shopping spree; her intellectualism isn't at the cost of any sense of materialism), but we can't help but question whether the dream she's living is her own, something that her professor father Emil (Ronald Guttman) throws in her face at the Codfish Ball. Is this what she wants? What has happened to her own pursuits and dreams? Has she shoved them to the back of the queue to please her husband?

(Megan's relationship with Don is juxtaposed against that of Emil and Julia Ormond's Marie; Megan's parents are far more traditional and traditionally unhappy. Emil can't seem to please his wife with anything he does and sees any comment she makes as a personal attack against him and his failures. Unable to achieve his goals, he wants to provoke Megan into making her own choices and not being dependent on someone else's wealth, which he views as the corruption of dreams.)

While we're meant to see Megan as a modern woman, if she's shortchanged her own ambitions in order to fall in line with her husband, that makes her more deeply connected to the traditional role than we've seen before from her. After all, we did learn in Season Four that she wanted to be an actress. Has she traded one dream for another? Is this why she's so low-key and almost deflated after her victory at dinner? It's noticeable that Megan isn't cracking open the champagne or jumping up and down, despite the fact that Don openly credits her at the office for her success with the client and the campaign. She's almost somber here, refusing to soak up the limeline, denying herself a celebratory bow or pat on the back.

It's Peggy who seems to snap her out of it. I half-expected Peggy to be upset or even jealous of Megan's victory here, but Peggy has aligned herself more closely with the male, Don Draper perspective, positioning herself even in the role of mentor or experienced (male) elder, choosing instead to celebrate Megan's accomplishments rather than see her as competition. What she says to Mrs. Draper--"I should be jealous, but I look at you and I feel like I’m getting to experience my first time again...This is as good as this job gets."--clearly echoes Don's words to her earlier in the series.

While it connects Peggy to her own past ("I'm getting to experience my first time again") and Megan to the future (more moments like these), even as it reminds Megan to experience the present, to enjoy the moment for what it is: as good as it gets. But is Megan's hesitation to celebrate a sign that as good as this job gets isn't enough for her? That the reality doesn't match her envisioned expectations?

Those bruised expectations are what fuel the entire episode largely. Peggy fully expects Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) to propose to her over dinner at Minnette Tavern, because traditionalist Joan (Christina Hendricks) pumps her up to believe that a marriage proposal is surely to unfold during the meal. (I loved the scene, by the way, between the two women in Joan's office, as Joan proffered a cigarette and asked Peggy if she wanted to close the door and talk. It was a beautifully nuanced scene that depicted the burgeoning friendship between the two women this season.) She even goes so far as to buy a new (pink!) dress that highlights her femininity and traditional values (the pearls!), but the proposal--of the marriage sort, anyway--doesn't come. Instead, Abe asks her to move in with him, a modern and almost shocking proposition, considering that people didn't really "shack" up much until now, given the view that a couple that did so was "living in sin." (Such hypocrisy, given that such couples were inevitably already engaged in pre-marital sex.)

While she's thrown by the proposal, she accepts his offer, even issuing a somewhat lamenting "I do" in response. But given Peggy's own backstory, she's not one to stand on ceremony or do things that society expects from her. She's a trailblazer, a glass ceiling-breaker. She and Abe are in love and want to do this, regardless of the expectations that Peggy's overbearing mother (Myra Turley) throws at her, that Abe will use her "for practice" and then move on and marry some other woman. Her rage here is palpable, her anger at Peggy transformed into something churlish and spiteful (the entire cat speech), a mother who refuses to see her daughter's happiness because it conflicts with her own notions of propriety and decency.

Kathryn is of the past, while Peggy is of the future: Peggy's decision to move in with Abe without accepting the sanctified bonds of marriage break the eternal timeframe posited by Megan's campaign: this is something that mother and child do not share. The generational bond splinters here as something that's incomprehensible to Kathryn, even as it seems quotidian to the viewers, becomes a reality for her daughter. Times, they are a'changing, it seems, and Kathryn would rather walk out of Peggy's apartment forever than stay and see her daughter do something so "wrong" and selfish. It's heartbreaking, even as it is brutally realistic. Peggy's decision may signal her own happiness, but it's not one that everyone will understand.

I was nervous to see just how Joan would handle the news, given that it was Joan's advice that set Peggy up for some unrealistic expectations about what Abe wanted to discuss with her. But rather than offer the condemnation that Kathryn does, Joan offers heartfelt congratulations to Peggy, talking about how the piece of paper that she had with Greg (the marriage certificate) mattered little when he chose the military over her. Her words shout to Peggy are essentially to grab hold of any happiness you can, regardless of what society might think about it. After all, Joan is choosing to raise her child (had out of wedlock with another man) on her own; their decisions mark them as outsiders but also as modern women as well. Her expectations are that Joan will be disappointed, but here the reality trumps the envisioned: Joan instead calls her decision "romantic."

Those romantic notions are what fuel Sally. After accidentally causing Pauline (Pamela Dunlap), or "Bluto" as Sally calls her, to break her ankle, Sally and Bobby are forced to join Don and Megan in Manhattan, where they're entertaining Emil and Marie as their houseguests. What follows is an attempt on the part of Sally to engage in adult behavior, envisioning herself as a woman rather than a girl. Her transgressive acts begin with the repeated phone calls to Glen (Marten Holden Weiner), now at a boarding school, though she denies herself the role of "girlfriend" here, and continue as she recreates herself in the mold of a modern woman.

While we expect to see Sally dressed in something traditional and girly, she stuns the audience as well as the assembled group at the apartment when she comes out wearing an outfit that is firmly rooted in the modernity of the 1960s: white go-go boots, lots of makeup, and something sleek and futuristic. She's transformed here into not the little girl that Don sees Sally as, but as a young lady on the cusp of womanhood. (It's what leads Emil to make the crack that "one day your little girl will spread her legs and fly away.") While Don refuses to let her attend the American Cancer Society dinner unless she ditches the boots and the makeup, Sally relents, though she forces herself into the role of an adult throughout the evening, forcing herself to eat fish (which she hates, as we learned earlier) and playing at being Roger's "date" for the evening.

While she may have asked for spaghetti rather than Dover sole earlier in the episode, here she not only forces herself to taste a morsel, but finds that she enjoys it, surprising herself at her evolving tastes and identity. Her rapport with Roger (John Slattery) is endearing here, as she tucks her gloves into her purse, which will become a receptacle for business cards Roger gains from prospective clients, pushing him out out onto the floor with a "get 'em, tiger" as her role requires, as she sips another Shirley Temple.

(Aside: The episode's title, of course, comes from a 1936 Shirley Temple film, Captain January, which features a dance number called--you guessed it, "At the Codfish Ball," in which Temple and Buddy Ebsen (filling in, one imagines, for Roger Sterling here) dance together. Interestingly, the film was attacked by Graham Greene for Temple's perceived coquettishness and for a decadence to the entire film.)

But the evening doesn't quite match up with Sally's romantic notions about what will unfold for her first foray into adulthood. Immediately upon entering the ballroom, she horrified to discover that there is no grand staircase here, no means of making a dramatic entrance, taking her cues from film and television, a debutante ball, a Cinderella story wherein she becomes the object of affection for everyone in the room, the char girl transformed into the beautiful princess. But life is not, to Sally's chagrin and horror, a Disney film. She encounters firsthand the realities of both adulthood and of her own desire to return to being a child again, faced with something she's not ready to understand when she catches Marie fellating Roger in a back room. Her revulsion and horror propel her back to a need to reclaim her childhood, reminding her that she's not ready for this leap into adolescence just yet.

When asked by Glen how the city is, Sally sums it up masterfully, capturing the physical state of Manhattan and her own feelings of horror toward what she witnessed between Marie and Roger: "Dirty."

Sally may be on the path to adulthood, and she may be growing up before our and Don's very eyes, but there's also a sense that she's still very much an innocent and a child and that her time will come. The child becomes a woman, the daughter a mother. Time marches on, the cycle continues, but it's impossible not to feel that Sally's future will be far different than what the previous generation has experienced. And even if it doesn't match up with her expectations, there is still magic in the undiscovered possibility of what that future will hold for her and for us.

Next week on Mad Men ("Lady Lazarus"), Peggy is irritated by a secret she has to keep. Pete covers for a friend and Don gets unexpected news.

The Trip: Far Away Places on Mad Men

“Every time we fight, it just diminishes this a little bit..."

There was a definite feel of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction to the latest installment of Mad Men, ("Far Away Places"), written by Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner and directed by Scott Hornbacher, as the show went into uncharted territory, giving the viewer a series of interlocking and parallel stories that folded in on themselves, narrative origami that delved into the nature of truth and honesty, as well as perception. Laced with LSD, the episode may prove to be a divisive one: part of the effort depended on just how quickly one realized that the triptych's stories were occurring simultaneously and that there was a reset each time between the three plots (Peggy, Roger, Don). (Otherwise, you may have felt that you yourself had taken something.)

But there is also inherent interest to be had in pulling apart why these three individuals were cast in these particular stories, all of which revolved around taking a trip of some kind, stepping outside of their respective routines or senses of self to ultimately reach some hard truths about themselves. In their respective plots, they aren't coming together so much as they are falling apart, breaking down the bonds that exist between them to cast themselves as somehow independent and isolated, wounding their respective partners by falling into patterns that are unsympathetic or outright cruel, indulging in behavior that is perhaps "wrong" but pushes them to pursue a particular path. Whether that's back to where they were or someplace far away is up to them.

But there are questions that are kicked up by the dream-like and non-linear episode: Is there an absolute truth to be found in transgressive behavior? Does casting off our individual normative routines free us somehow? Is it beauty or folly?

Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) is clearly trying to fashion herself into Don Draper (Jon Hamm), and the episode plays up these similarities: her shocking display at the Heinz pitch, the camera holding on her lighting up a cigarette, indulging in a drink or four during the work day, and Peggy literally replacing Don within his own office. At the end of the day, she casts herself in the role of a Don Draper manqué, unhappily slumbering on the couch in his office until Dawn wakes her up.

Peggy's failure throughout the day--both with her boyfriend Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) and with the Heinz pitch--stem from the fact that she's a woman, a fact that's thrown back in her face by her lover and her client. Abe chides her for being like his father, needing a minute after coming home to find her equilibrium before being with him, obsessing over the missing violet candies, focusing always on work, putting her career before her family, before--seemingly--her own happiness, as defined by Abe.

Likewise, Don would have gotten away with telling the client the truth ("It’s young and it’s beautiful, and no one else is going to figure out how to say that about beans!"), and would have convinced said client to run with the campaign for its inherent beauty, nostalgia, etc. But Peggy is not Don, and she doesn't have the luxury of being a well-dressed, attractive man, one whose cast-off charisma is intoxicating to be around. Instead, Raymond (John Sloman) casts her in the role of his uppity teenage daughter, seeing her explosion as a tantrum rather than as something that's convincing or true. He fails to find an element of truth in her combative statement--which is, of course, not only true but apt--instead refusing to see her as independent of Don or as a replacement for him. Not surprisingly, Peggy is removed from the account, really for just telling the truth in the same way that Don has time and time again.

Her trip is an afternoon movie, fittingly Born Free, and she indulges in some marijuana and a furtive cinema handjob with a stranger (Joseph Williamson), wherein she asserts her own dominance over the encounter. Rather than allow herself to be pleasured by this stranger, to be passive and submissive in their encounter, Peggy reverses the situation, casting herself in the role of active participant in this anonymous semi-sex, attempting to fulfill her efforts to become Don Draper, the male pursuer, the one with power in the encounter.

Is it fulfilling? Has her transgression put her closer to an absolute truth? At the office, she literally washes her hands of the entire encounter, placing it into some dark file drawer in her mind. But her return puts her in the office just in time to eavesdrop on another awkward conversation between Ginsburg (Ben Feldman) and his father Morris (Stephen Mendel), which in turn leads to a moment of truth between Ginsburg and Peggy, albeit one that's couched in fictional terms. While Ginsburg casts himself as a Martian in his spoken autobiography, the truth tumbles out as well: he was born in a concentration camp, which somehow seems less true than if Michael really was was from Mars. But the fictionalization of his story is the only way Michael knows how to convey the horrible truth of the circumstances of his birth. In his own act of (minor) transgression, there is an absolute truth to his story: he is an outsider, searching for another of his kind, born in a far away place that's utterly unknowable except to those who experienced it firsthand.

Likewise, Peggy's own actions propel her back to Abe in a way. Calling him from her darkened apartment, she summons him over, saying that she "always" needs him. It's an apology, but it's also a plea. She doesn't want to be the only one of her kind, cast adrift in a place that's not home and never will be, without a tether, without an anchor. Without, really, a guide.

The notion of a guide echoes throughout the episode as well: unspoken in Peggy's story, a guide actively appears in the segment of the episode devoted to Roger (John Slattery), whose journey to truth takes him on an LSD-fueled vision quest with his wife Jane (Peyton List) when they attend a dinner party thrown by Jane's psychiatrist Catherine Orcutt (Bess Armstrong, yes from My So-Called Life), who hands out LSD--on a perfect silver tray of sugar cubes--while her husband Sandy (Tony Pasqualini) acts as their guide.

While we're not privy to what Jane experiences, the viewer is invited inside Roger's acid trip, one in which bottles of vodka become symphonic orchestras, his hair is turned half-black, he can experience the 1919 World Series, and Don arrives in his psyche as perhaps some sort of spirit guide through his subconscious. There's a lucid dream quality to the narrative here, a Lynchian atmosphere in which the inherent truth of everything--including inanimate objects, such as the bottle of vodka--suddenly becomes fluid and transformative.

There's also a sad, somber quality as well: the sight of Jane and Roger slowly dancing together at Catherine's apartment, the sense that they've stumbled into something beautiful and also tragic. That yellow rose she holds in the cab becomes nothing more than yellow petals cast over the rumpled sheets of their bed. The beauty of a rose is always transitory and fleeting: it reminds us that nothing lasts forever. Once cut, it's already in a state of dying.

Which can be applied to the marriage of Jane and Roger as well. Their trip enables them to speak the truth that they've been denying for so long, that their marriage is over and they're each waiting for the other to end it outright. This shared trip through the subconscious minefield of their relationship is the last one they'll take together, but the elimination of their boundaries and inhibitions allow them to speak aloud the uncomfortable truths they've been carting around for so long. The following morning, however, once they've reestablished those "norms" in their routine, it's Jane who can't come to terms with what's been said, what was admitted during their journey. Her knowledge that the marriage is over, that they're essentially leaving each other, is erased in the harsh light of morning. Instead, she returns too to her own normative position: if he wants a divorce, it's going to be expensive.

Their shared night of beauty--that bath, the talk on the floor (which is echoed as well in the Don/Megan storyline, though with a vastly different tone)--may have been true and honest, but the fact remains that divorce is an expensive business and whatever truths were uncovered may be absolute but it doesn't diminish our mercenary natures. The rose may be dead, but someone has to pay for it, after all.

Just as Roger and Jane fall apart, so too do Don and Megan (Jessica Paré) on their own trip. Theirs is a more literal journey, a trek to a Howard Johnson in Plattsburg, but what occurs on their trip is destructive and revealing, kicking up uncomfortable truths about the nature of their relationship and how Don sees Megan. The phone call that occurs in the Peggy segment--in which a near-hysterical Don calls the office frantically asking if anyone has called--is meant foreshadow a sense of dread within this part of the triptych. Just why is Don so sweaty and freaked out? Is he also on something? Whose call is he waiting for? Why is he so scared? It's here that the episode fulfills the promise of its non-linear narrative, giving us a part of a puzzle early on and then filling in the blanks by returning to the past before coming full circle. By withholding the nature of Don's distress, Weiner gives us a tantalizing mystery. The truth is also out of our own reach as viewers, until we too go on a journey of sorts to discover why Don is making that phone call.

The domesticity of Don and Megan's car trip (hell, they're headed for, of all places, Lake Placid) is at odds with how Don proposes they take this journey together. Rather than offer her the option of joining him (it's Roger's idea, after all), Don forces her to come along, viewing her as largely an extension of his own self rather than as an independent being, one who can make up her own mind and who perhaps does value her job. We've been told in numerous episodes that there are work-related benefits to being married to Don Draper, but Megan doesn't see this as one of those perks; rather, it pulls her out of her own ordered routine. But if Peggy seems hell-bent on becoming Don, here it feels as though Don is becoming Roger, his younger trophy wife suddenly not so enchanted by his behavior or attitude.

It's the small things that can often blow up in our faces the most, and here it's Don's refusal to let Megan order her own dessert--instead foisting the orange sherbet on her--that lead to a meltdown in which Megan downs a ton of ice cream and then Don ultimately leaves her in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson. His cruelty here is deeply felt, stranding Megan in an unfamiliar place while he heads out to who knows where. While Roger and Jane go on a shared journey, there's a sense here that Don and Megan are on different trajectories altogether, embarking on separate trips altogether. While Don waits in Plattsburg, he tries to track down Megan, hoping that she'll return before he sets out for Manhattan, only to discover that she herself went back to the city.

Before we get to their fateful encounter, there's a dream-like aura to this story as well, which isn't fueled by recreational drugs but by fear and paranoia. But even before Megan's disappearance, there's a hyper-real nature to the segment, everything is filled with super-saturated colors (including that of the Howard Johnson itself, something commented on by several characters), from the decor to the orange sherbet itself, lending everything that unfolds a sense of heightened reality that connects with both Peggy and Roger's narratives. Don's remembered flashback--which again puts Megan in the role of guide, giving her a map and a destination--is a stark reminder of the first blush of love and of a seemingly idyllic moment in time: the kids tucked up in the backseat (Mickey Mouse ears a souvenir of their trip to Disneyland), a Beatles song whistled in the air. But here the car is empty; Don is alone. He has no guide but himself, no destination but perhaps an empty house. A brightly colored hotel isn't the "destination" but ultimately a stop on the way to somewhere else. Or even back home, where things have perhaps changed forever.

Don has to kick down the door to his home to get to Megan, and then literally pursues her frantically around the apartment, as they collide with furniture and lamps, leaving destruction in their wake. He actually tackles her and throws her to the ground in the sunken living room, almost perfectly on the spot where she serenaded him earlier this season. Nightmarish and fueled by violence and a notion of male domination, their encounter is brimming with powerful truths about their marriage. Megan half-jokingly refers to Don as her "master," but there's something to the notion that he's controlling her, ordering her food, determining what her day will hold at home and at work. Don just wants to possess her, to hold her close. His tearful words to her (“I thought I lost you.") as they embrace at odds with the savagery of his pursuit through their home. But is their shared smile at work later that morning the truth? Are they happy and content? Or is there a secret war between them, a panicked flight through the state, through their home? Can they get past this? Or has their journey simply revealed their own inherent flaws to themselves and each other?

It's Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) who has one final piece of truth to dole out, reminding Don that he's been on a trip this whole time, "love leave" in fact, which has meant that he hasn't been present. He's been to a "far away place" this entire season, basking in the glow of his new marriage, falling into the same distracted traps that Roger has time and time again. His absence--whether physical or intellectual--has put the firm in jeopardy. It's another pall cast on the day, another truth that's too jagged for Don to swallow. Roger may see it as a "beautiful day," but I can't help but see darkness and pain to come.

What was your take on the episode? Did it warrant the non-linear treatment? Did you feel as though the characters' transgressive acts moved them closer to an understanding of them and their respective spheres? What happens to these truths, unboxed and exposed, once we return to our regular lives again? Do we pack them up and pretend they don't exist, smiling in the hallway, or do we attempt to confront them head on once more? Hmmm... Personally, I found a lot to reflect about here, and I'm glad that I--as always--took the night to think about the episode and turn it over in my head a few more times before sitting down to write about it. Ultimately, "Far Away Places" is a vision quest that requires us to parse the meaning of the iconography and psychic landmarks along the journey. Alternately surreal and gut-wrenching, it's a journey I'm glad that we as viewers--and the show itself--took.

Next week on Mad Men ("At the Codfish Ball"), Don, Roger and Pete attempt to bring in new business; Sally comes to the aid of a relative.

Collision: The Emasculation of Pete Campbell on Mad Men

"What do I do here?"

Throughout the series thus far, Mad Men's Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) has been presented as many things: a slimy weasel, an ambitious businessman, an amateur rapist. But this week's episode ("Signal 30"), written by Frank Pierson and Matthew Weiner and directed by John Slattery, focused on the character flaws of Pete Campbell (referred to as a "grimy pimp" here) to the point that the episode really ought to have been entitled "The Emasculation of Pete Campbell," for the number of male-driven crucibles it put the seemingly smug married executive through over the course of an hour. (Some, such as James Poniewozik and Myles McNutt have argued that this season of Mad Men has replaced subtext with overt symbolism, but while I agree with that assessment, it hasn't diminished my love for the show or my regard for this particular well-crafted installment.)

It's been no secret that Pete is desperate for the approval of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), his surrogate father figure. While Pete keeps a secret for Don, what he's wanted in return for his silence and trust is nothing less than unconditional love and approval, something that Pete was unable to get from his own father while he lived. From the puppy-like beaming when Don and Megan (Jessica Paré) choose to visit him and Trudy (Alison Brie) in the suburbs, it's only too clear that he requires Don's affections, presence, and approval in his life.

But Pete is on a dangerous path. Inasmuch as Pete wants Don's tacit approval of the choices he's making, he's also on a collision course with his own destiny: becoming Don. Pete's return home after their night of carousing (and one hell of a sobering cab ride) is a clear callback to the final scene of the pilot episode, in which Don returns home to Betty (January Jones), revealing that the series lead is in fact married.

But we know that Pete is married, seemingly happily married. We see the influence and input that Trudy, no wallflower, but an intelligent, engaged wife and mother, has on his life, as she hosts a dinner party for two of Pete's colleagues and their significant others. While Betty didn't understand what it was that Don did for a living, Trudy defends the role of ad man and of the industry over the dinner table. She's clearly a champion for her husband, though his own feelings on their marriage seem decidedly conflicted.

The episode is largely about what it means to be a man in the 1960s and how several of the characters construct their own perceptions of that definition. Is it by fixing the kitchen sink of a suburban home, far from the city? Is it indulging in alcohol and whores, while one's wife is asleep in bed at home? Or is it remaining faithful, even in the face of temptation, and changing one's own destructive patterns and impulses?

Does one punch mean the difference between feeling like a hero or a failure?

Throughout the episode, Pete is given several opportunities to prove himself a man in his own eyes (though no one else seems to doubt this self-identity crisis). The taunting drip of the kitchen sink at the beginning of the episode, which is keeping Pete awake at night, acts as a stark contrast to the idealized vision of seduction and pursuit that he engages in with Jenny (Amanda Bauer) at his driver's education class. Half his age, a high school student, Jenny represents an opportunity to reclaim his lost youth, to indulge in a flirtation that is vastly different than his "serious" marriage, with its demands of fatherhood and fidelity. (The Botanical Gardens of their conversation take on an almost Eden-like quality, a church among the trees, an oasis from the quotidian demands of his existence.) His efforts to fix the drip backfire magnificently, when at Trudy's dinner party, the faucet begins to spray water everywhere. But while Pete messes around with his toolbox (a symbol, perhaps, of his own fussy masculinity), Don removes his shirt and tie and fixes the sink without breaking a sweat, much to the adoration and delight of all of the party's female members, including Megan, Trudy, and Cynthia (Larisa Oleynik), the wife of Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) whose name neither Don nor Megan can remember.

Pete's conquest of Jenny similarly backfires, when a younger, more attractive man in Jim Hanson (Suburgatory's Parker Young), nicknamed "Handsome," turns his attentions to Jenny. The balding, older Pete can't compete with "Handsome" here at all; it's as much of a non-contest as it is attempting to compete with Don. As much as Pete might try to present himself as either Don or Hanson, neither path is really readily available to him, neither example of perceived masculinity (handiness with tools and/or women). In fact, it's his visit to a prostitute, while the SCDP lads are wooing the Jaguar account (brought in by Jared Harris' Lane Pryce), that clinches this. As the girl goes through any number of turn-on lines to entice Pete's libido, it's telling that the one that works is the one in which she plays to his need to be "king," a need to feel in control and powerful, following a series of events that have occurred that have proven just how weak and powerless he sees himself.

While Pete gives in to temptation, it's interesting that the "new" Don Draper doesn't, particularly after last week's fever dream. Don has seemingly exorcised that part of him that needed to cheat, and he sees what he has with Megan as something sacred and powerful. But just as Pete wants to be Don, Don seemingly wants to be Pete, to return to the idealized suburban existence he left behind. While Megan is turned on by Don's prowess with the kitchen sink, Don has Megan pull the car over so they can make a "baby." But Don seems to have forgotten one thing: he's been down this figurative road before; he's had the wife, house, and kids, and they still left a void that he attempted to fill by philandering, by finding comfort in the arms of other women and in the bottom of too many bottles of booze.

But Pete longs for the urban lifestyle that Don has: the young wife, the seemingly carefree existence, the easy masculinity that is evidenced in nearly everything Don does. He sees Don as a success, himself as a failure. Pete reads Don's silence in the cab, his decision to forgo the pleasures of the "apartment," for disapproval of his actions. For Don, he can't imagine why Pete would jeopardize what he has with Trudy; a happy man doesn't cheat. A happy man doesn't risk his present and future happiness for a few fumbling moments of pleasure. Roger (John Slattery) is miserable, Don says, which is why he does what he does. But what Don can't fathom is why Pete would risk ruining it all.

Pete's sullen reaction belie a host of seething problems within his psyche, and his furtive shower upon returning home speak volumes about his guilt. But it's not clear who he failed more, whether that's Trudy or Don. He had, after all, been circling Jenny for some time, clearly willing to embark on an extramarital affair with her, clearing following in Don's footsteps as the cheating husband whose arrival at the family home grew frequently later and later.

The scene in the elevator that passes between them the following day, Pete's face red and raw from his fight with Lane (more on that in a second), was powerfully profound and beautifully shot, particularly the part when Pete gets choked up and, while fighting back tears, admits to Don that he has "nothing." But what has Pete lost that he hasn't himself thrown away? How does a successful businessman, husband, and father have nothing exactly? Why must Pete view himself in terms of how he perceives himself next to the other men in his life?

While it's Roger's carousing that actually leads to the loss of the Jaguar account, as Edwin Baker (David Hunt) is forced to confess the night's activities to his wife when she discovers, as Lane delicately puts it, "chewing gum on his pubis," it's Pete who gets the blame from Lane, mostly because Pete has impugned Lane's manhood, telling him that Edwin didn't bring up such partying with Lane because he thinks he's a "homo," and that he has no value to the firm any longer. The fistfight that follows is an attempt for both men to try and reclaim something that has been lost to them, to try and salvage something of their masculine self-identity. (Kudos to Roger for his brilliant line about feeling as though they should take the higher moral ground and stop the fight, but wanting to see where it goes.)

When Lane and Pete scuffle, their battle is just as much an internal one as it is a collision between the two men, as they trade blows, protecting their business ties as much as they are their individual egos and sense of male pride. That it's Lane who knocks Pete to the floor is significant for them both, as Lane reasserts his own sense of self and Pete loses the last vestiges of his own. Yet, Lane isn't quick to celebrate; the fight has only exacerbated his own existential crisis, as he ponders the question above, "What do I do here?" It's a question that's about each of our own essential natures, our roles in the world as men. Is he essential to his family, to his agency? Can't someone else fulfill these roles?

(It's not the only collision that occurs here. Besides for the driver's ed videos depicting car accidents and Lane and Pete's fistfight, the episode also depicts the collisions between the old and new worlds, between American and British ways of conducting business, between generations and ideals, between Don and Pete, and between the self and the other that powers much of our exchanges.)

Perhaps in the fulfillment of multiple Lane-Joan (Christina Hendricks) fanfic fantasies, Lane impulsively kisses Joan, once again in a attempt to display his own masculinity, turning to sex as a means of proving his virility to himself. While Joan dismisses the advance, she does so delicately and carefully, not storming out of the office, but rather opening the door to appeal to Lane's genteel views on propriety. And her playfulness, stating that many men in the office have wanted to do what he's done (i.e., punching Pete Campbell, rather than making an advance on her), defuses the situation magnificently. Lane saves face, even as Joan puts him back in his place. (For now, at least. While I can see the potential for something developing between them, Joan is in no place right now to even consider another relationship.)

Kenny is only too happy that Lane has "kicked the crap" out of Pete, something he wanted to do, particularly after Ken's side gig as a science-fiction/fantasy novelist--writing under a pen name, Ben Hargrove--has been discovered by Roger, who dissuades him from continuing. While Ken claims that he was only writing in order to please his wife, who works for a publishing house, it's clear that he derives satisfaction--and a strong sense of self--from this endeavor, even though he's writing under a nom de plume in order to conceal his own true identity.

But Pete is too obvious a suspect here. While he's weaselly enough to go to Roger and tell him about Ken's side job, the more likely culprit is actually Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), who has a pact with Ken that if he leaves SCDP, he'll take her with him. He's far less likely to do so if his writing career takes off, and Peggy is an opportunist when it comes to her career. If it means clipping Ken's wings so that he'll be forced to stay at the firm for now and concentrate on his advertising career, the upshot is that their pact remains in place. If he continues to write, if he becomes successful, their pact becomes meaningless. Plus, we've seen recently that Peggy and Roger have gotten closer these past few episodes. If someone was whispering in Roger's ear, it's more likely to be Peggy, in my opinion.

But getting knocked down doesn't mean that you're out of the fight altogether. As the episode ends, we're given a glimpse into the mind of Ken Cosgrove, who has constructed a new identity for himself, a new pen name (Dave Algonquin) as he begins to write a new story (“The Man With the Miniature Orchestra”) as his wife sleeps next to him. The titular character would seem to be Pete Campbell, proud owner of a stereo who imagines a "tiny orchestra" dwelling within. And as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony plays to an unhearing audience, Pete lays in bed in the dark, replaying the sight of Hanson sliding his hand up Jenny's skirt, while hearing that dripping kitchen sink faucet, a tell-tale heart reminder of his own failures as a man.

On the next episode of Mad Men ("Far Away Places"), Peggy is rattled by a particularly difficult pitch; Don visits a potential client.

The Pursuit: Fever Dreams on Mad Men

"You loved it."

What does it mean to be a good man? Is it the ability to uphold one's vows--constancy, fidelity, honesty--or is it that one's actions echo forever in a relationship? We're given a prism in this week's episode of Mad Men ("Mystery Date"), written by Victor Levin and Matthew Weiner and directed by Matt Shakman, through which to view both Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Greg Harris (Sam Page), as well as the notion of the pursuit, which looms large over the action, casting a dark spell from which several characters find they cannot wake.

It's telling that Michael Ginsburg (Ben Feldman) offers a disturbing fairy tale to the pitch clients rather than the agreed-upon campaign that he had already discussed with Don, putting everyone on the spot. He offers up a narrative that's certainly not in line with the Disney version of Cinderella, but casts the heroine as the prey of a deranged man, who pursues her down the darkened alleys and cobblestone streets of a dream-like European castle city. Despite the fact that this Cinderella is happy to see the man, who has her missing shoe, there's an innate darkness and sense of violence to the story, one that clearly connects to the news of the student nurse slayings that Joyce (Zosia Mamet) gleefully discusses with the copywriters at SCDP. (For reference, Richard Speck raped and killed eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966; one nurse, who hid under the bed, escaped with her life.)

It's the reporting on this gruesome incident, as well as the imaginations of those reading and hearing about it, that comprises much of the action of the episode, drawing the viewer in, just as it offers both fictional and real pursuits upon the women in the episode. It's also through this narrative that we're taking into the subconscious mind of Don Draper, witnessing a fever dream that acts upon his own sense of guilt, his own discomfort about his role as a "good man" as he's forced to contend with the phantom appearance of a former lover.

In reality, his chance encounter in the elevator with freelance writer Andrea (Mädchen Amick), in which he's forced to introduce his ex-lover with his current wife, Megan (Jessica Paré), is awkward and slightly tense, a visual callback to his philandering ways when Don was married to Betty (January Jones). But it's little more than that, the subject of an even more awkward conversation between the two newlyweds and a further expansion on the idea that Megan knows all of Don's sins and failings. But it's this encounter, along with the knowledge of the Speck murders that inform Don's fever dream when he returns home from the office.

A number of stray details from the day creep into his subconscious: the meeting with Andrea, the pursuit of Cinderella (manifesting here as both Don's pursuit of Andrea, Allison, Faye, and a multitude of his other female co-workers, apparently, as well as Andrea's dogged pursuit of Don), the knock at the door (reminiscent of Richard Speck), the strangulation of "Andrea" and Don "disposing" her body under the bed (again echoing the one surviving girl of Speck's terrible crimes), while her leg sticks out of the bed, missing one shoe, a visual callback to the Cinderella story that Michael spins to the clients. Here, it's that missing shoe that's terribly disturbing, casting Don in the role of Cinderella's crazed pursuer, as Richard Speck, as the terrible man beset by guilt over his actions that he strangles his lover and shoves her under the bed.

It's as if all of Don's sins come back within the subconscious desire to purge himself of weakness. He's proven incapable of remaining true to Betty, a philanderer who repeatedly slept with other women and then blamed his wife for his own shortcomings, something Megan refuses to do and refuses to let him do to Betty. Don is flawed because Don is flawed, full stop. An encounter with a past mistake of his reminds of this in no uncertain terms, and while he "gives in" to the advances of "Andrea," he attempts to purge his conscience by making sure she can never return to haunt him again, never darken his doorway or his bed. His impulse is violent and final, the strangulation of a lover he just took in his marital bed.

Are these the actions of a "good man"? Or simply nothing more than the dreams of a fever-ridden man, a jumbling of subconscious motifs and desires, a manifestation of deep-seated guilt within his heart? Don is visibly relieved when he wakes up from his slumber to find Megan there, an angelic figure entering the room with a tray of orange juice, and no corpse under the bed. One of Speck's victims may have gotten away to safety, but Don's dream victim isn't so lucky. She's punished for her hunger, for her sexuality, for being a woman, for simply being there. And the knowledge that it was just a dream still shakes Don to the core. So has he exorcised his guilt? Or simply been reminded of what he's capable of in a heightened and imaginary sense?

Likewise, Joan (Christina Hendricks) has constructed her own dream world, one in which Greg returns from his military service in Vietnam and they become this smiling, happy family: professional Joan with her beautiful baby boy and her handsome doctor husband. But this dream is just as illusory as the one that Don envisions. Greg has volunteered for another tour of duty in Vietnam, saying that the military "needs him." He's done so without consulting Joan, concealing the real reason why he'll be returning after just ten days. It's a blindside of the worse kind, offering Joan the emotional whiplash she's been hoping to avoid.

But the fairy tale that Joan has spun herself is darker than she envisioned. There is no happy homecoming for Greg, no photos with his new son Kevin (who, let's not forget, is not even Greg's baby), no perfect cake and perfect reunion. Their ten days together become torture for Joan but she also refuses to let herself continue to be chased down those darkened alleys by her seemingly perfect husband or answer that fateful knock at the door. Greg is far from perfect and far from being a "good man." I've been waiting several seasons now for a callback to the fateful night Greg raped Joan on the floor, but Mrs. Harris had done such a good job of pretending it didn't happen, pushing it to the back of her mind, that it emerges, fully formed, here like a fever dream, as she confronts Greg about his choice to return to the war, and about what happened between them.

It's Joan's suggestion that the military might make Greg feel like a man, because she's no longer willing to try to do it anymore that transforms her from a victim into the hero of her own story, fighting back against her pursuer even though she's only got one shoe on. Her notion of Greg not being a "good man" is entirely true, and she reminds him here of what he did to her, urging him to walk through that door and out of her life forever. It's a transformative moment for the wounded Joan, one in which she takes back control of her life and her destiny. She won't be a military wife, standing on the sidelines, but an independent woman. Bravo, Joan.

Poor Sally (Kiernan Shipka) is trapped in the "haunted mansion" of the family's new home in Rye, under the strict and unwavering supervision of Henry's mother Pauline (Pamela Dunlap). It's when she reads the newspaper that the killings spring to life within her imagination... and, apparently, Pauline's as well. Sitting downstairs with her "burglar alarm" (read: a very long kitchen knife), Pauline is attempting to read and eat some of Betty's Bugles but she's frightened by the appearance of Sally, whom she then further torments by sharing the details of the Richard Speck killings.

Does she do it to snap some sense into Sally--a verbal version of the "kick across the room" that Pauline's father gave her in order to open her eyes--or to connect with her? Is there a sense that fear is a communal emotional, something to be shared and savored, or that there is something somehow freeing and cathartic about unburdening your sense of terror by sharing with someone else? All possibly true.

While there is finally a moment of rapport between the two (though Pauline's storytelling abilities are clearly not what Sally needed at the moment), Pauline breaks the spell by offering Sally a half a Seconal so she can sleep. The sight of little Sally asleep under the sofa when Betty and Henry (Christopher Stanley) finally return home that connects back to the notion of dark fairy tales. Here, Sally is cast as a figurative Sleeping Beauty but it's fear that led her to her slumber, and she's cast herself in the role of the "girl who survives," hiding under the sofa and the sleeping Pauline. (Anyone else get a Valley of the Dolls vibe from Sally's storyline this week?)

(Aside: I loved that Sally was watching Mystery Date here and then that became the episode's title, an image that echoes throughout the episode, from Don and Andrea's imagined pairing, to the Richard Speck crimes, and throughout...)

Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) hears a noise while working late at the offices (again, further suggesting what I wrote about last week about the seeming dynamic building between John Slattery's Roger and Peggy), only to discover that it's Don's new secretary Dawn (Teyonah Parris) sleeping in Don's office, rather than risk traveling home late on the subway. (Peggy's naive and sense of privilege shows painfully here; she suggests that Dawn flag a cab or take a taxi; when Dawn says that her brother won't let her, because it's too dangerous, Peggy immediately jumps to the student nurse slayings, rather than the more realistic threat that the riots pose to Dawn's safety.)

In an act that she likely sees as "modern" or "progressive," Peggy invites Dawn to spend the night at her place, where she too attempts to cast her own fairy tale, seeing Dawn as a victim of oppression, the only one of her kind at the agency, whom Peggy might pluck from obscurity and "discover," transforming her from hapless secretary to important copywriter. But Dawn doesn't want to be a copywriter, and admits that she likes her job, and she unwittingly denies the similarities between her situation and Peggy's, even as Peggy forges ahead blindly. Yes, they may have both been Don's secretaries, but their situations couldn't be more different, and Peggy approaches Dawn with all the condescension and privilege of a white person in the 1960s. It's clear, however, that Peggy doesn't even totally buy her own spin, wondering if she acts too much like a man, questioning whether she really wants this life, transforming their beer-fueled discussion into an existential crisis that's all about Peggy again, as Peggy continually interrupts Dawn, making the entire conversation all about her, rather than her guest.

And she breaks one of the most important codes: that of hospitality. Despite her "modern" views, Peggy proves herself to be just as prejudiced and racist as anyone else at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. After telling Dawn earlier that she's come into some cash (courtesy of Roger, in a sequence that acts as a callback to his negotiations in Episode 501/502 with Harry Crane and proves that Peggy is more astute and clever than Harry when it comes to negotiating, talking Roger out of $410 for secretly doing some work for him for Mohawk Airlines), she is about to leave the room and go to bed when she notices her purse on the coffee table. There's a moment of frisson between the two women--Peggy notices the purse, Dawn notices Peggy noticing the purse, Peggy notices Dawn noticing Peggy, and on and on it goes--and Peggy is unsure how to break the terrible moment they've found themselves in. She tries to recover, grabbing the beer bottles and mumbling an excuse about how she ought to clean up, but the spell is broken between these two: Peggy is revealed to be not "good," connecting her not with the victims of the story but with the male pursuers (hence her line of questioning about being too much like a man), and with privilege and societal majority.

More troubling: Dawn's polite note, placed purposely atop Peggy's lime-green purse, thanking her for her hospitality, her sheets and blankets neatly folded on the couch, a sad reminder of the chasm that exists between them, despite Peggy's best intentions. Sometimes being good isn't as easy as it appears, especially when dealing with one's subconscious faults. Sometimes, the survivor gets away by hiding under the bed, and sometimes the Big Bad Wolf can take all sorts of forms.

Next week on Mad Men ("Signal 30"), Lane strikes up an interesting friendship; Pete entertains guests.

The Daily Beast: "Game of Thrones and Mad Men Characters Fight to the Death"

Don Draper vs. Tyrion Lannister? Betty vs. Cersei?

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Game of Thrones and Mad Men Characters Fight to the Death," in which I imagine 10 tongue-in-cheek battles between the characters of AMC’s Mad Men and their Game of Thrones counterparts on HBO.

With the return of AMC’s Mad Men and HBO's Game of Thrones, Sunday evenings have become a tug of war, with the two critical darlings exerting an irresistible pull on the faithful.

It’s hard to escape certain similarities between the two shows: both take place in distant times (OK, Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, is set in another world altogether), both delve into racial and religious issues this season, and both feature heavy drinking, illicit relationships, and completely inappropriate workplace behavior in worlds that celebrate ambition, cruelty, and Machiavellian power grabs.

Which raises an imaginary question: what if the ad men and women of Mad Men were forced to fight to death with their counterparts in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros? Would Don Draper (Jon Hamm) take down Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage)? Just how are Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) and Varys (Conleth Hill) alike? And who is more of a sociopathic boy-king: Joffrey Lannister (Jack Gleeson) or Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser)? In the game of thrones, you either play or die…or you just black out from drinking too much.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

Caged Birdie: Replaceable Pieces, Replaceable People on Mad Men

"When is everything going to get back to normal?"

Just how unique are we? Are we ever, in a sense, irreplaceable, or is our position in this world, and the lives of those around us, so tenuous that we're able to be replaced the very moment someone new and shiner appears on the scene?

There's an irresistible sense of replacement hovering over the action of the latest episode of AMC's Mad Men ("Tea Leaves"), written by Erin Levy and Matthew Weiner and directed by Jon Hamm, which served to not only fill the audience in on just what happened during the between-seasons gap to Betty Francis (January Jones), but connected her plight to something deeper and more poignant. Just as the old guard must give way to the new guard, progress and change are inexorable twin spectres in the lives of all of us.

Standing on the precipice of incalculable change ahead, there's a sense of both doom and possibility, that our lives--even in the face of such monumental life-and-death stakes--are forever changing. You can either plant your feet and get left behind or move with the changing tide.

It's through this perspective that we see several sets of pairings emerge over the course of "Tea Leaves," the title of which makes an unmistakable emphasis on the unknown, unseeable future. (Even an alleged fortuneteller, sifting through the tea leaves left behind by Betty, can't predict just what will happen to the unhappy housewife.) Just as Megan (Jessica Paré) has supplanted Betty in Don's life, so too has Betty's new husband Henry (Christopher Stanley) in Betty's life. There's even a symbolic allusion between the two women, connected not only by their relationships with Don, but by a gorgeously simple narrative device in which the two women zip up their dresses at the beginning of the episode: Megan's is zipped with ease by Don in the bedroom of the house they share, her slim figure slipping easily into her modern dress; Betty struggles, however, with hers, enlisting the aid of her children to squeeze into the too-tight silhouette, before climbing into bed and feigning illness.

Betty's psychological struggles have been a hallmark of Mad Men since the beginning of the series, her sense of ennui, of boredom, of being a caged bird echo sharply throughout many episodes. I was curious to see just how Weiner would work Jones' advanced pregnancy into the storyline here, and simply assumed that Betty and Henry were having a baby, though I felt that it was an easy out of a situation that would feel repetitive amid Joan's own new baby storyline. Not so. Instead of simply making Betty eight months pregnant (as Jones was when this was filmed), Weiner instead chooses to put Betty through yet another crucible, with the episode becoming a look at her own personal demons, and in a potential battle with cancer.

Despite its place within the human body, cancer becomes an external struggle: it's a physical battle with one's own body and with the foreign invader. But Betty's problems are once again internalized here. Put aside the Victorian fainting couch, the shotgun, the child psychologist; Betty's latest struggle is again with herself, manifesting now in a monumental weight gain that, we learn over the course of the hour, isn't hypothyroidism or cancer, but rather a need to fill the emptiness in her life with food.

There is a shock in seeing the Grace Kelley manqué reduced to sitting around her hulking mansion in a pink housecoat scarfing Bugles by the handful, or indeed seeing her--after coming through her ordeal more or less unscathed--finish Sally's dessert after eating her own. Betty has always been brittle and icy, and out of touch with her own sense of self and her body. By making her plight resonate in her physical self, Weiner imbues Betty with an even deeper sense of tragedy and horror, her need to tamp down any semblance of emotion with food, rendering her once perfect physical form even more imperfect. Despite the fact that she herself is already remarried, she sees "20-year-old" Megan (who is, actually, 26) as her successor in Don's life, seeing the younger woman as her replacement. But Betty is also being replaced here by Sally (Kiernan Shipka), the blonde, slim, feminine youth who denies herself the pleasure of ice cream beyond a few bites because she's "full." Is Betty's decision to finish Sally's dessert her way of conceding defeat, of giving over to her daughter, even as she comes into her own?

For the Betty-haters out there, I'm sure this episode fulfilled a lot of revenge fantasies. But I've always had a soft spot for Betty, primarily because she can't help herself but be so icy and impregnable, a product of outmoded ideas about femininity and motherhood. And there's a sense of commitment on the part of January Jones here to make her so outwardly ugly and weak, a vast 180 degree turn from how we've seen Betty depicted in the first four seasons. There's a moment of connection between her and Don when she calls him to tell him that she may have cancer, a tenderness that's been lost amid their divorce and years of discord. (I loved the callback to him calling her "Birdie," a term of endearment we haven't heard from Don in several seasons.) And there was a real beauty and tenderness to the scene in which Betty holds Gene in her arms. With the sparklers crackling around them, she feels the weight of her baby in her arms, breathes in the scent of his hair, not knowing whether this will be one of the last times she'll do so. Will she see this boy become a man? Will she leave her family in mourning, a ghost at the breakfast table, her space not co-opted so much as eliminated entirely?

I thought that scene in particular was gorgeously and subtly acted by Jones and evocatively directed by Hamm, a sequence that captures the heat of a summer night, a mother's love, and the fragility of our lives. While it may have only been a few seconds in length, it was powerful and savage in its emotional realism.

Betty isn't the only one who feels that they are being replaced. It's keenly felt in the Roger (John Slattery) and Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) storyline as well. Pete manages to land Mohawk again, returning an airline account to the SCDP fold. It's a key victory in a time of "stability," and Pete makes it clear that he's the one responsible for winning them back, though Roger will be overseeing the account. The "celebration" enacted by Pete is little more than a public power grab, a way of emasculating Roger and boxing him into a smaller, less potent role. The student has replaced the teacher, the son replaced the father. It's the natural way of the world, but it doesn't make it hurt any less. Roger's entire language about helping Pete off the swings reinforces the notion of the child/parent divide, of youth co-opting their elders, something echoed in Don's encounter with the girl backstage at the Rolling Stones concert. (Her belief: her elders don't want her to have fun, because they didn't. His: we worry about you. Rather than see the girl as a potential object of sexual conquest, like Harry (Rich Sommer) does, Don instead sees her as a daughter figure, seeing her as Sally in a few years.) After all, Roger hired Pete, the last person he hired in fact, only to see his protege usurp his position in front of his eyes. Sorry, Roger, but this is "normal." You'd best get used to it.

I'm intrigued by the dynamic unfolding between Roger and Peggy, two characters who haven't had a lot of screen time together up until now. After getting Peggy to hire Jewish copywriter Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman) because he's brilliant and eccentric (and because having African-American and Jewish employees makes the agency seem more "modern," according to Roger), Roger tries to impart his realization to Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), reversing his earlier position. Peggy doesn't see Michael as a threat, but the truth is that he is potentially. Just as Pete supplanted Roger, so too could Michael take away the influence that Peggy currently wields within the agency. But that is the risk you take. Peggy believes that it's better to surround yourself with creative people, that it makes your own work better. Roger now sees his own folly: he's essentially made himself redundant by hiring a younger version of himself.

That all of this is unfolding amid cultural and political change is compelling. Seeing that Don has hired Dawn (Teyonah Parris), an African-American applicant, as his new secretary is a clear sign of progress. That the previously anti-Semitic Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce has willingly hired a Jewish copywriter--unlike last season's Danny (Danny Strong) who they were forced to hire--also reflects a changing environment and atmosphere. Equal opportunity may be had soon, regardless of religious belief or skin color, but the youth revolution, the enormity of the youthquake ahead, is only just beginning to rock the foundations of the world that Roger and Don exist in.

On the next episode of Mad Men ("Mystery Date"), Don runs into someone from his past; Joan makes a decision; and Roger gives Peggy extra work.

Games People Play: Thoughts on the Fifth Season Premiere of Mad Men

"Nobody loves Dick Whitman."

It's been seventeen long months since we last saw Mad Men and the breathless two-hour season premiere goes a long way towards curbing our addiction, quickly bringing us up to speed in the changes within the lives of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), and the rest of the ad men at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

If Season Four began with a provocative question ("Who is Don Draper?"), the fifth season opener ("A Little Kiss"), written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Jennifer Getzinger, begins with more than a few declarative statements, about both the characters and the era in which they live, and those four little words, uttered by Megan (Jessica Paré), speak volumes about the sort of relationship Don is enmeshed in when Season Five begins.

For a man who cloaked himself with secrets as a woman might a mink coat, Don Draper is living a life that's far more free and open than we've seen the past four seasons. In fact, his entire identity--previously predicated on a monumental lie--seems far more at ease at both work and home, though it's still, as always, fraught with complication. This is Mad Men, after all, and a Don at peace with the world is very dull indeed...

The world itself is far from at peace with itself when we rejoin the story: riots in three cities, racial tensions, and organized protests right under the windows of SCDP rivals Y&R in the opening sequence of the episode. Said sequence finds Y&R execs callously tossing water-filled bags onto the protestors, soaking a young African-American boy and leading his mother to go up to the executive floor and offer a piece of her mind. While the entire scene seems at first disjoined and separate from the action, the two-hour opener proves just why it was constructed as a double-episode, rather than just two single episodes strung together. Folding in on itself, the episode is bookended by considerations of the protests and of the semblance of equal opportunity.

While Don and Roger's "equal opportunity" ad is meant to be a jape at the expense of Y&R, it has serious implications, not least of which is that SCDP must hire at least one person of color in order to save face. While the show has had African-American characters in the past (Lane's Playboy Bunny girlfriend and Paul Kinsey's girlfriend, to name two, as well as the Drapers' housekeeper, Carla), the office itself has remained a lily-white place of business, populated largely by the old guard and one or two (Peggy, Joan, and Megan to an extent) women who have managed to carve out positions of power. But the doors of the lobby have more or less remained closed to anyone who didn't fit the mold of Roger Sterling and his cronies. Until now.

I'm curious to see just who gets the sole secretary job that Lane (Jared Harris, astonishing as always) has been forced to carve out of the budget, lest SCDP find themselves the subject of a protest, and how this new woman fits into the microcosm of the company amid some very turbulent times.

But while there are clearly external pressures at work here, not all of the changes occurring are taking place from the outside-in. Sally (Kiernan Shipka) is once again adjusting to change in her own life, adjusting to the sight of a naked woman in her father's bed, a woman who is the new "Mrs. Draper," and is drinking black coffee while it's Don who is cooking breakfast for the kids. There's clearly some unease on behalf of Sally towards Megan, a mixture of curiosity and ambivalence, seeing her role as her father's favorite co-opted by a newcomer into the household. She's largely trapped between the half-finished bedroom at her father and Megan's gorgeous new Manhattan apartment and an empty skulking castle of her mother and Henry's in Rye: the city and suburbia, the past and the future, stability or revolution.

Megan herself is entirely grounded in modernity: a modern woman who is the exact opposite of Betty Francis (January Jones) in every respect. She drinks black coffee, works for a living, has her own money, and isn't afraid to engage in provocative and sexually forward behavior, something that would mortify the icy Betty. Megan's surprising performance, at Don's surprise party, of "Zou Bisou Bisou" is a landmark for the show: the ownership by a woman over the male gaze of her partner. While the song is performed for Don, while all eyes (both male and female) in the room are on her, Megan is clearly getting off on the attention and claims ownership over the sexual energy she gives off. (She even tells Peggy earlier in the episode that when she throws a party, people go home and "have sex.")

It's both a sexually charged performance and an intimate gift for Don, offering him a piece of herself in front of his colleagues, bringing the private into the public sphere. It also backfires magnificently. The always-private Don is embarrassed to see his sexually hungry bride so blatantly charged up; it's a collision of the ordered sectors of his own life. And there are casualties as a result.

Don's furious response, as he tries to go to bed while Megan is still keyed up from the party sums up a potential chasm in their nascent marriage, of ideals as well as emotions. If Megan sums up liberty, both sexual and social, she represents the potential and promise of progress. She's the pretty young thing that Don wanted to own, but she's proven that she won't be owned by anyone ("It's my money," she tells him) or controlled. Her sense of fashion, her friends, her outlook are sharp call-outs to the cultural revolution making its first steps here. But unlike Roger and Jane's dreary marriage, Megan won't be captured in a gilded prison, even one of her own making. She's fiercely independent, fiery, and passionate, in touch with her emotions ("I don't like those people") and her own body. (Paré is fantastic, eradicating the sense of Megan as an innocent naif from last season, rendering her a full-blown liberated woman here, all polka-dots and black undergarments, a French coquette with a body and a brain.)

The sense of the male gaze is reflected back in the cleaning scene after Megan goes home early from work. As Don finds her cleaning up after the party, the tension between them turns into something else: a sex game, in which Megan, stripped down to her bra and panties, begins to "clean up" while flaunting her body, telling Don that he doesn't deserve to touch her, let alone look at her, that he's old and probably can't even have sex. A moment of potential dominance/submission (she tells him to sit and watch her) turns into a moment of sexual release on the white carpet of their palatial place, a far cry from the desperation of Don's bachelor pad on Waverly.

While Don has moved more firmly into a wealthy sphere of Manhattan, it's Pete who has traded his apartment for a house in the suburbs, while Trudy--now a mother herself--waits at home or drops him off at the station. His sense of loss, embodied by his line about hearing the traffic over the party music, said wistfully, is keenly felt here, the "sacrifice" he's made in order for his family. But whether he comes to resent Trudy (as suggested by his commuter train passenger friend) or whether he softens and changes remains to be seen. At work, however, Pete is just as vengeful and territorial as ever, demanding a larger office (he ends up getting Harry Crane's office with its windows, while Harry embarrasses himself in front of Megan, showing his true colors) and tricking Roger into a 6 a.m. meeting.

It's this sense of gamesmanship that powers the episode in several ways: the Y&R ad, Megan/Don on the floor, Lane's efforts to make believe with the "girl" Dolores, another fixation for the sensible Lane, torn once again between his duties as a "gentleman" and family man and that of a man in the 1960s.

Lane is unexpectedly captivated by the sultry promise of Dolores, a kept woman rolling around in bed at 11 a.m. in her undergarments, especially when he sees her slob of a boyfriend, Mr. Polito, who is nothing like the man that Lane had imagined. His decision to keep Dolores' photograph, with its girlish "XXOO" inscription, in his own wallet is the keeping of a talisman, something that connects him to an alternate self, a garter on the arm of a knight, an emblem of both chaste chivalry and of wanton sexuality. He's a man trapped between relationships, between countries, between cultures, something we're reminded of both by Dolores and Polito, who immediately know that Lane isn't "from here."

It's also Joan who finds herself cast adrift. Now a mother, she's torn between the duties of her station and of her own desires. She admits, only to Lane, that she missed work, missed what was happening without her, the jokes (again, that return to games) and the daily goings-on. While she clearly loves her baby, her identity is predicated on more than just her role as a mother and wife; she herself is intrinsically connected to the office and the professional sphere. Her emotional breakdown in Lane's office, as he chivalrously offers her his handkerchief to blot her eyes, comes when she realizes that she has value in the eyes of her coworkers, that she still has a job. It's not so much an escape hatch from her life, as it is part and parcel of it.

There's also a clear connection between her baby being soothed by the movements of the elevator and Don as well: the shot of Joan and her mother rocking the baby to sleep in the elevator is juxtaposed with a shot of Don and Megan in the elevator at the office. If Don is at his best at work, as we've seen the last few seasons, what does it mean that he's now defining himself in terms that go beyond that? That he's not as driven, not as severe (as evidenced by his lack of support in front of the clients of Peggy's "bean ballet" concept for Heinz), and not as decidedly grim? If work isn't everything, than what is to Don? Even after his argument with Megan, there's the sense that these two have something deep and mysterious between them, built on honesty and truth, and that the Don Draper we thought we knew has perhaps changed somewhat.

Who is Don Draper? I feel like we're only just beginning to know the answer to that question. But what we're seeing here is a Don Draper altered by his surroundings, his relationship, and his outlook. A man in summer, casting off the memories of the past, fittingly on Memorial Day weekend. A household of children and a twinkle in his own eye when he looks at Megan holding Joan's newborn son. Personally, I can't wait to see just what happens next: felicity or misery? Opportunity or adversity? Pleasure or pain? Is it true that nobody loves Dick Whitman, or that someone finally does, warts and all?

But regardless of what happens next, Season Five of Mad Men began with enough style and substance to power a season of most other shows. I'm curious to know what you thought: what did you all think of "A Little Kiss"? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Next week on Mad Men ("Tea Leaves"), as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce tries to build upon its current business, Peggy is given new responsibility; Don and Harry indulge a client.

The Daily Beast: "Mad Men: Where We Left Off"

Who remembers what happened 17 months ago? No one!

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature,"Mad Men: Where We Left Off," for which I re-watched every episode of Season 4 of Mad Men (in a 36-hour period) in order to remind you where we left Don Draper, Peggy Olson, Joan, and the rest of the characters when the season ended.

Television, like advertising, is typically a swift-moving beast. But it’s been a staggering 17 months since Mad Men aired its last episode. At the time, no one could have predicted that it would be March 2012 before AMC aired the highly anticipated fifth season of Mad Men, which returns this Sunday evening with a sensational two-hour season premiere.

The reasons behind the delay are known far and wide, as protracted and very public contract renegotiations behind the scenes of Mad Men resulted in a longer than expected hiatus between seasons, and the show’s devoted audience is only too keen to catch up with the staffers of 1960s advertising agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Strict embargoes on the content of the season premiere (“A Little Kiss”) prevent us from spilling too much about the long-awaited return, but creator Matthew Weiner will surely allow it to be described as gorgeous, provocative, and well worth the wait. Despite its, er, rest, Mad Men isn’t at all sluggish; in fact, Season 5 kicks off with an installment that propels the plot, the characters, and some of the show’s most important themes, amid a turbulent time of change that is personal, political, and social.

Given the lag between seasons, it’s only natural that you’ve forgotten the details about what happened during Season 4. Just who did Don (Jon Hamm) end up with at the end of the season: was it vivacious secretary Megan (Jessica Paré) or driven career woman Dr. Faye Miller (Carla Buono)? Why was Lane (Jared Harris) beaten by his severe father? What passed between Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Roger (John Slattery)? Who was Miss Blankenship (Randee Heller)? From Don and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) to Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Sally (Kiernan Shipka), get back up to speed on all of the players before the new season of Mad Men begins.

Continue reading at The Daily Beast...

The Daily Beast: "Spring TV Preview: 9 Shows to Watch, 4 Shows to Skip"

With the return of Mad Men and Game of Thrones, spring is officially here.

Over at The Daily Beast, I offer a rundown of what’s worth watching over the next few months, and what you can skip altogether.

You can read my Spring TV Preview intro here, which puts the next few months into perspective, and then head over to the gallery feature to read "9 Shows to Watch, 4 Shows to Skip," which includes such notables as Mad Men, Community, Game of Thrones, VEEP, Girls, Bent, and others... and those you should just skip, like Magic City, Missing, etc.

What shows are you most looking forward to this spring? And which ones are you pretending don't exist at all? Head to the comments section to discuss...

The Daily Beast: "Our Emmy Picks!"

While the Primetime Emmy Awards aren’t typically known for offering gasp-inducing surprises, last year’s ceremony did make an instant star out of The Good Wife’s Archie Panjabi, who walked off with the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, even as most of the crowd gathered said, “Who?” (Those of us who know and love The Good Wife, however, cheered for Kalinda’s win.)

Anything is possible, particularly in some key races (like Panjabi’s category again this year) that are going neck-and-neck as we move into the days leading up to Sunday’s telecast, which will air—for the second year in a row—live from coast to coast.

The winners will be announced on Sept. 18’s live Primetime Emmy Awards telecast on Fox.

But, in the meantime, over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Our Emmy Picks!," in which Maria Elena Fernandez and I offer their predictions of who and what will take home the top prizes in 10 key Emmy races. Will stealth frontrunner Margo Martindale win for Justified? Will Jon Hamm finally take home the Emmy for Mad Men? And will AMC’s period drama four-peat this year? Let’s take a closer look at the major categories. (Meanwhile, all of our Emmys-related content from the last few weeks--from Mad Men and The Good Wife to Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey--can be found in one location, right here.)

Who do you think will win at this year's ceremony? And who should win? Head to the comments section to discuss our predictions and debate the potential winners.

The Daily Beast: "The Real Race for Best Drama: Why Mad Men May Not Win"

The race for the Emmy Awards’ top drama prize isn’t as cut and dried as it looks.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "The Real Race for Best Drama: Why Mad Men May Not Win," in which I examine the cutthroat competition this year for best drama, and why Mad Men may not win the top spot at next weekend's awards ceremony. (Though it probably will.)

What's your take on the drama race this year? Will Mad Men four-peat? Will The Good Wife claim the top pick? Will HBO's Game of Thrones or Boardwalk Empire walk away with the statuette? Or will Friday Night Lights pull off the impossible and finally get some recognition for its outstanding fifth and final season? Head to the comments section to discuss.

The Daily Beast: "Mad Men Up Close: Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm on 'The Suitcase'"

Mad Men's fourth season episode "The Suitcase" was instantly deemed a classic hour of TV.

Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Mad Men Up Close," in which series creator Matthew Weiner and star Jon Hamm offer an oral history of the gut-wrenching, Emmy-nominated episode "The Suitcase." Weiner and Hamm dissect six of the most powerful and indelible sequences from “The Suitcase,” the relationship between Don and Peggy, and Hamm’s performance, which Weiner called “magical.”

Get your handkerchiefs ready.

Season Five of Mad Men is slated to begin March 2012 on AMC.

TCA Awards: Friday Night Lights Wins Program of the Year, Game of Thrones Named Outstanding New Program

It is known: Game of Thrones is the winner of this year's Outstanding New Program by the TCA.

As a member of the venerable Television Critics Association (TCA), I joined the professional journalists' organization this evening for the annual TCA Awards, which are always a fantastic evening celebrating the best of television.

At the ceremony (which, as per TCA tradition, are not be televised), Parks and Recreation's Nick Offerman was on hand as the host of the evening, which saw awards given out to Game of Thrones (Outstanding New Program), Friday Night Lights (Program of the Year), Mad Men (Outstanding Achievement in Drama), Modern Family (Outstanding Achievement in Comedy), Sherlock (Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials), and The Amazing Race, among others.

Individual winners included Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Parks and Recreation's Offerman, Modern Family's Ty Burrell, and Oprah Winfrey, who was the recipient of a career achievement award.

The full list of TCA Award winners (as well as the official press release) can be found below.

THE TELEVISION CRITICS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES
2011 TCA AWARDS WINNERS

DirecTV/NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” Named Program of The Year
HBO’s “Game of Thrones” Wins Outstanding New Program

“Mad Men,” “Modern Family,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Restrepo,”
“Sherlock,”
“Sesame Street” and “Amazing Race” are honored along with
Oprah Winfrey and “The Dick Van Dyke Show”

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – The Television Critics Association (TCA) tonight recognized the top programs and actors of the 2010-2011 television season at its 27th Annual TCA Awards presentation. Nick Offerman, star of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation,” hosted the annual invitation-only event, held at The Beverly Hilton hotel in conjunction with the TCA’s summer press tour. The non-televised ceremony bestowed awards in 12 categories to recipients in comedy, drama, reality, miniseries, news and youth programming.

Members of the TCA, a media organization of more than 200 professional TV critics and journalists from the United States and Canada, voted HBO’s “Game of Thrones” this season’s “Outstanding New Program” and honored the final season of DirecTV/NBC’s “Friday Night Lights” with its award for “Program of The Year.”

Winning its second consecutive TCA Award, ABC’s “Modern Family” took home the award for “Outstanding Achievement in Comedy.” AMC’s “Mad Men” received the award for “Outstanding Achievement in Drama,” its third in this category, having previously won the distinction in 2008 and 2009.

The award for “Individual Achievement in Drama” went to actor Jon Hamm (Don Draper, of AMC’s “Mad Men”) while actor/host Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson, of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation”) shared the honor of “Individual Achievement in Comedy” with fellow actor Ty Burrell (Phil Dunphy, of ABC’s “Modern Family”).

While PBS Masterpiece’s “Sherlock” emerged victorious in the category of “Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials,” CBS’s “Amazing Race” received the organization’s first award for “Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming.”

The TCA also recognized PBS’s “Sesame Street” with an award for “Outstanding Achievement in Youth Programming,” and the National Geographic Channel documentary “Restrepo” received top honors for “Outstanding Achievement in News & Information.”

In addition to recognizing the year’s finest programming, the TCA bestowed a Heritage Award on CBS’s former series “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (1961-66) for the cultural and social impact the program has had on society. Carl Reiner, the show’s creator and the recipient of the
2003 TCA Career Achievement Award, was on hand to receive the honor alongside series actors Rose Marie and Larry Mathews.

The non-profit organization also presented Oprah Winfrey with a Career Achievement Award for her influence through 25 seasons of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

2011 TCA Award recipients are as follows:
•    Individual Achievement in Drama: Jon Hamm (“Mad Men,” AMC)
•    Individual Achievement in Comedy: Ty Burrell (“Modern Family,” ABC) and Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation,” NBC)
•    Outstanding Achievement in News and Information:
“Restrepo” (National Geographic Channel)
•    Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming: “Amazing Race” (CBS)
•    Outstanding Achievement in Youth Programming: “Sesame Street” (PBS)
•    Outstanding New Program: “Game of Thrones” (HBO)
•    Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials: “Masterpiece: Sherlock” (PBS)
•    Outstanding Achievement in Drama: “Mad Men” (AMC)
•    Outstanding Achievement in Comedy: “Modern Family” (ABC)
•    Career Achievement Award: Oprah Winfrey
•    Heritage Award: “The Dick Van Dyke Show”
•    Program of the Year: “Friday Night Lights” (DirecTV/NBC)

Mad Men Deal Closed: Matthew Weiner to Stick Around for Potentially Three More Seasons

We can all exhale now.

While the the ad men of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce won't be back on the airwaves until March 2012 now, creator/executive producer Matthew Weiner will be returning to the 1960s, having successfully closed a deal with AMC and Lionsgate that will keep him around for Seasons Five and Six, and a potential seventh season.

“I want to thank all of our wonderful fans for their support," said Weiner in a prepared statement. "I also want to thank AMC and Lionsgate for agreeing to support the artistic freedom of myself, the cast and the crew so that we can continue to make the show exactly as we have from the beginning. I'm excited to get started on the next chapter of our story.”

“AMC’s original programming began with a mission to create bold storytelling of the highest quality, and Mad Men was the perfect expression of that commitment. We've been proud to support this show from the day we read Matt's ground-breaking pilot script and have loved building it with Matt and Lionsgate into the cultural phenomenon it has become,” said AMC president Charlie Collier. “For everyone involved in the show and its passionate fans, we are thrilled to announce that the series will continue on AMC under the exceptional vision of Matt Weiner.”

(UPDATE: It now seems clear, based on comments made by Weiner, that Season Seven of Mad Men would likely be its last.)

The full press release, announcing the deal, can be found below.

AMC AND LIONSGATE ANNOUNCE MULTIPLE SEASON DEAL FOR ‘MAD MEN’ WITH
MATTHEW WEINER SIGNING LONG-TERM AGREEMENT TO CONTINUE AS SHOWRUNNER

New York - March 31, 2011 - AMC and Lionsgate today announced the
return of the iconic series "Mad Men" for seasons five and six with
series creator Matthew Weiner back on board as showrunner.
Concurrently, it was announced that Weiner has signed a new long-term
deal with Lionsgate, extending into a possible seventh season. The
announcements were made by Charlie Collier, president of AMC, and Kevin
Beggs, president of Lionsgate Television Group.

When AMC debuted “Mad Men” in July 2007 it quickly became one of
the most talked about series on television. Set in 1960s New York,
“Mad Men” is a sexy and provocative original drama that follows
the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue
advertising. Produced by Lionsgate, “Mad Men” has made television
history as the only cable series to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding
Drama and the Golden Globe for Best Television Series-Drama for three
consecutive years.

“I want to thank all of our wonderful fans for their support." said
Weiner. "I also want to thank AMC and Lionsgate for agreeing to support
the artistic freedom of myself, the cast and the crew so that we can
continue to make the show exactly as we have from the beginning. I'm
excited to get started on the next chapter of our story.”

“AMC’s original programming began with a mission to create bold
storytelling of the highest quality, and ‘Mad Men’ was the perfect
expression of that commitment. We've been proud to support this show
from the day we read Matt's ground-breaking pilot script and have loved
building it with Matt and Lionsgate into the cultural phenomenon it has
become,” said Collier. “For everyone involved in the show and its
passionate fans, we are thrilled to announce that the series will
continue on AMC under the exceptional vision of Matt Weiner.”

“We are proud to continue our successful relationships with AMC and
the brilliantly talented Matt Weiner, whose vision has created one of
the most distinguished series on television,” said Beggs. “We also
appreciate the passion and patience of ‘Mad Men’ fans around the
world who have been awaiting this good news, and we believe they will be
rewarded with many more seasons of this extraordinary and groundbreaking
series.”

Mad Men’s award-winning ensemble cast includes: Golden Globe-winner
Jon Hamm, January Jones, Elisabeth Moss, Vincent Kartheiser, Christina
Hendricks, John Slattery, Jared Harris, Rich Sommer, Aaron Staton,
Robert Morse and Kiernan Shipka.