Mad Men 3x02

Ooh, Mad Men is so goooood!!! Ken Cosgrove is trying to land a deal with Pespi’s Patio Diet Cola, hoping to have lunch with the head honchos and royally piss off Pete Campbell! How I love where this is going! Peggy Olsen’s catching on to the sexism involved in the advertisement, facing comments like, “you don’t have to deal with this, you’re not fat anymore.” She asks if they really need a knock-off sex bomb who looks twenty five but plays fourteen, and tells her colleagues that customers don’t always know what’s right. She’s upset that it’s phony, that the commercial is selling a male fantasy to a female audience, and that it’s aiming at the wrong target. And you wanted to know why I like her?

Meanwhile Pete just about loses the new Madison Square Garden and Penn Station account because Paul Kinsey threw a (righteous and rightful) fit of nostalgic preservationism instead of a sales pitch. Hahahah! And Don is sent into the lion’s den to tame the uproar! And he does it so well, so elegantly: the protesters can’t stop construction; change is neither good nor bad; if you don’t like the conversation, change the topic. So simple, straightforward, to the point, rational, logical! I love this guy. He saves the account, only to learn the next day that the London office killed the deal... whoa! Old Europe missed out on the New New York. What’s so marvelous about the show is how they include our anachronistic hindsight. No one then could have known what the Garden would become, but we do. Very smart.