Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Mad Men 4x09

Mad Men, The Beautiful Girls, on AMC
Mad Men, your Chirping Cricket contends, is the best drama show on television this past decade. For that alone the show deserves all the Emmy’s they can get. The buzz is that the episode “The Suitcase” (4x07) is certainly worth nominations for Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss for their stellar performances. That episode was intense and the interaction between Don and Peggy phenomenal. But this week’s episode, to me at least, was so very much more fulfilling emotionally. It satisfies on all levels, the writing, the acting, the directing, the cinematography, the subtle score – and let’s not forget the costumes and the sets, which are always pitch perfect. If there was any hesitation in your mind that Mad Men isn’t the best show on tv, this one should cast all doubts aside. After an episode that was about men, this week’s title is “The Beautiful Girls,” and that’s obviously for a reason. It’s all about women: Peggy and Joan, Faye and Joyce, Betty and Sally, and poor Miss Blankenship – and interestingly it is not about Bethany. Let’s review.

When your world is falling apart, how do you know when you cross from lubricated to morose? Joan seems to know – and Roger has crossed that point. She’s not amused that he keeps flirting with her at work. Roger needs to hear from his secretary that Joan’s husband Greg is being shipped off to Vietnam. He has always regretted he didn’t marry her, that he let her go. He gets her a full massage, manicure and pedicure at home, but expects to take her out for dinner in return. “You’re incapable of doing something nice without expecting something nicer in return,” Joan retorts. Nevertheless, she agrees, and he confides that all his good memories are with her. On their way back home, Roger and Joan get robbed at gun point – a poignant reminder of the plight of the poor, and of the civil rights movement – because the mugger is black. In their nervous excitement, Roger and Joan have sex under a stairwell. He tries to apologies the next day, but she tells him she’s not sorry, yet reminds him they are both married.

Peggy’s counter-cultural friends, lesbo Joyce and Abe, the self-righteous artsy-fartsy leftist, are back in the picture. Peggy is worried about hiring new copywriters, because it will bring in more men to compete with. Abe, ironically, is a writer, but he is merely trying to convince her that the corporate world is killing her creative soul. When the subject turns to the civil rights movement, Peggy replies that women face discrimination in the workforce, too. Abe doesn’t get it and jokes they should have “a civil rights march for women.” She admits she feels criticized – and he defends himself by saying, “This is discourse!” (Sorry, Abe, but you can’t say that to your date.) He later stops by at the office to show her an article, “Nuremberg on Madison Avenue,” eager to hear her thoughts about it. He’s pushy and abrasive. When he realizes that he insulted her, all he can say is, “I guess I read you wrong,” and sighs, “you look so earnest.” How can you come up with dialogue like that, it’s amazing!

Don finally has a mid-summer afternoon tryst with Faye – and he is much more clear-headed and sober than before. He even allows Faye to stay in his apartment when he heads back to the office. He gets called out of a meeting, because his daughter Sally ran away from home and took the commuter train all by herself (until some lady saw her and brought her to Don). Not willing to go through the trouble of picking up her daughter, Betty agrees to stop by the next day – when she happens to be in the city anyway – and so she doesn’t have to deal with her rebellious daughter for a day. No sooner does he return to the meeting then he is called out again, this time because his secretary Miss Blankenship has died in her office chair. Don then asks if Faye can look after Sally for the rest of the day. Perceptive as she is, Sally later asks her father if he is going to marry Faye and he implies that they may see each other again. She wants to stay with her father, she hates it there, with her mother and that Henry Francis. At night, Don wants to write in his journal, but closes it – an interesting commentary on last week’s overbearing voice-over diary entries. (Not that again, please, we don’t need voice-overs to inform us of the subtext; we’re smarter than that, thanks.)

Next morning, Sally makes Don French toast in the morning – accidentally using rum instead of maple syrup. He takes the morning off to go to the zoo with her, but when Betty arrives to pick her up, Sally has one of her fits again. She is so much like her mother – and still, or rather precisely because of that, I love her to pieces. I also love the implicit ambush by Faye, Peggy, Joan and Megan in the background, when Betty is confronted with her lack of parental skills. Don is not faring much better and even asks Faye to talk to Sally. What his daughter wants to know is that her father still loves her, even though he is no longer living with her mother, but he cannot say those words. He is incapable of expressing his feelings – at least not verbally. That, in fact, is the great irony of the show: the man who knows what everyone wants and who knows all the right words to convince them into buying it, that man cannot communicate emotionally. Still, for Don and Betty, the divorce is hitting home – on all fronts. “Jesus, what a mess,” Don sighs. Even Faye is upset. She feels Don put her through the test, and she failed. She just isn’t good with kids, but he soothes her it wasn’t her fault what happened with Sally. The episode ends with the elevator doors closing on “The Beautiful Girls,” Joan, Peggy and Faye – the women of Don Draper’s professional life.

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