(S01E03) At first I thought I had found the one thing I didn't like about this show: the ads. Not the ads discussed in the show, I'm talking about the commercials that run during the show. There aren't a lot of commercial breaks, just two or three, but they are rather long, and they have these trivia facts flashed on the screen before the ads.
For example, tonight we learned that "The first Fridays opened in New York City," and then there's a commercial for Fridays. We see text that says " 'Love Is All Around' was the name of the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and then they show that Chase card ad with the woman who has her first job and they play that song. At first I thought this was just offputting and a way to sell advertising (sort of like how The Price Is Right has real products in their games), but it actually works. If you have to have commercials, why not add some trivia too?
Besides, it made me realize you can advertise hard booze on TV again. There was an ad for Jack Daniels!
Anyway, the plot. Remember how last week we had Betty with her hands going numb and going to see a shrink? Tonight I'm beginning to think that Don is the one who needs help. He's getting increasingly unhappy in his marriage (not just schtupping the artist chick but making a play for the head of Mencken's department store), he's drinking beer like crazy and zoning out at the weirdest times (and most of those times had to do with trains tonight - what was that all about?)
The ad guys at Sterling Cooper are confused by the classic "Lemon" ad from Volkswagen. Some of them think it's brilliant, some of them are confused that an ad that basically dumps on the car can be so successful (a full page in Playboy!). Don doesn't get the ad at all.
Pete is back from his honeymoon, and though he talks a bit to the guys about his bedroom antics (nudge nudge wink wink), seems to really want to give marriage a chance, even suggesting to Don that he and the wives should get together some time. Peggy is all smiles with Pete, but he tells her he's married now and that was just a one time thing (this episode is all about marriage, if you couldn't tell). He even compliments her in that "it's just a harmless work flirtation" sort of way. The girls at work are all reading Lady Chatterly's Lover, and Peggy borrows it, though a co-worker warns, "Don't read it on the train, you'll attract the wrong kind of man."
The second half of the show is all set at Don and Betty's house (after a curious interlude where Ms. Mencken gives Don a tour of her department store, including the security dogs she keeps on the roof). Interesting how once the action switches to the homefront we don't see work again in this ep. The show is confident enough not to bounce back and forth so the action "keeps going." There's a lot of drama at the kid's birthday party too, including a visit from Helen, a divorced woman with a young boy. Divorced! In 1960! Shocking! Of course, Betty thinks she might be making a move on Don, because they were...standing next to each other? Whatever Betty.
The great period details continues, including a nice fleeting shot of an old Dash detergent box in the laundry room, one of the kids at the party having polio, even a radio broadcast that has news about the continuing tax evasion trial of...well, they don't say. We can run to our history books or Wikipedia to see who it could be, but again there's that confidence that the people behind this show don't have to hit us over the head with obvious info to place us in that time period (the smoking and the art design does that well enough).
Next week we meet Pete's new wife.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-02-2007 @ 11:52PM
reverenddebby said...
Bob - you missed a big moment in the show: when Don's old army buddy met him and called him by another name - "Dick Whitmore." Just who is Don and why did he change his name? Will be interesting to see this play out. Also, loved the children's conversation in the playhouse - "But I like sleeping on the sofa!"
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8-03-2007 @ 12:04AM
Bob Sassone said...
Yeah, I wasn't sure what that was all about. At first I thought the guy just made a mistake or something but it does sound like an interesting plot development.
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8-03-2007 @ 12:29AM
BC said...
She's divorced, she works, she doesn't iron her son's playclothes, and...she walks instead of driving...her Volkswagen. Next week we'll find out she's a Commie sympathizer; after all, she did go to Radcliffe. I was surprised that all the other women didn't try to namedrop where they went to school; maybe some of them went to, gasp, public colleges instead of one of the Seven Sisters.
I did have to laugh about the walking thing, though; even today suburbanites who choose to walk for exercise and enjoyment may be regarded as terribly eccentric by their car-addicted neighbors. Of course, in this time period it was not unusual for women to not learn to drive until after they were married, so it is to be expected they might place a premium on the freedom and convenience.
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8-03-2007 @ 1:20AM
timothey said...
You can go to this site for a boiled down review of Mad Men: http://www.unboundedition.com/content/view/1786/50/
Her next one will be up tomorrow.
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8-03-2007 @ 2:25AM
BigTed said...
The funniest scene was the lingering shot of the very pregnant woman smoking and drinking. It's a shock to see that today -- although many of us are old enough that our mothers probably did the same. There's lots of post-drinking driving, too.
In fact, while the depictions aren't always positive, this show is almost an ad for smoking and booze in and of itself. I'm not surprised there are liquor ads during the commercial breaks.
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8-03-2007 @ 7:12AM
K said...
"The great period details continues, including a nice fleeting shot of an old Dash detergent box in the laundry room........."
I fricking hope so. Otherwise, all this effort would be pointless, wouldn't you say?
DUH.
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8-03-2007 @ 9:45AM
Nova said...
how could you miss the name change with the old army buddy. Don doesn't discuss hit past with anyone. Everyone always says no one knows anything about him. That was a big goof on the reviewers part. That looks to be a plot line coming up.
I'm glad the show didn't go in the direction of trying to show Don all sauced but instead focused on his depression and his drive out to nowhere to think.
Betty's hands are definitely coupled with anytime she thinks she might end up like Helen.
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8-03-2007 @ 10:12AM
BobbyBuz said...
I had to laugh when the army buddy referred to IBM as International Business Machines. Their headquarters were in Armonk, NY. I wonder if they still have a presence in that city????
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8-03-2007 @ 10:26AM
BobbyBuz said...
@1 "Don's old army buddy met him and called him by another name - "Dick Whitmore." Just who is Don and why did he change his name?"
I completely missed that "reverenddebby." Good catch!
Perhaps he's hiding something? Like maybe he's Jewish? Or has a tainted background.
In a previous episode he wouldn't reveal anything about his upbringing to his boss or his wife.
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8-03-2007 @ 1:14PM
Jim said...
@BobbyBuz:
"Wondering" is a pre-Internet phenomenon. IBM still is headquartered in Armonk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
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8-03-2007 @ 1:11PM
eric f said...
nice details with the beer cans too. notice he had to use a can opener to drink them?
It was kind of odd that the neighbor guy knew Don wasn't coming back at all.
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8-03-2007 @ 2:29PM
viper5dn said...
In the first episode, we see Don take out his old medal from the war from his desk. On the the medal's case is his name-- Lt. Donald Draper meaning that in the war his name was Don, so its unlikely that he changed it. It could just be that the man on the train was just mistaken because Don didn't really recognize the man from IBM.
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8-03-2007 @ 10:56PM
Katie said...
Your comments: Bob-The infamous book title is Lady Chatterly's LOVER, not Love. As for the lingering scene of Don sitting in the car in front of the train, I'm actually surprised you didn't get this implication right off the bat: Don is becoming mildly suicidal. Come on, think about, the signs have been pretty well laid, at least in my mind. The main evidence of this is from last week's episode (or was it the first? It's 50/50), when Harry got to a meeting in Don's office late and said that his train was late because someone jumped in front of his TRAIN. I forget the exchange word-for-word, but it gave at least three different quick lines of dialogue, and I do remember Salvatore and Don making a pithy retort to it (this is only one of what will surely be one of many Chekhov's Guns to come in this show...)
The supporting evidence is his marked increase of drinking during this episode, and the "death wish" conversation in the pilot.
All I'm saying is that I really doubt the writers just decided at random to throw in the "a guy jumped in front of the train" as an excuse for someone being late to a meeting.
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8-03-2007 @ 11:03PM
Katie said...
BC - I'm pretty sure that Helen said she went to Mount Holyoke, not Radcliffe, (her line "four years of French class at Mount Holyoke" when she was mentioning her Paris honeymoon) although I'm sure the those hen-peckers will find a way to view Holyoke as a hotbed of commie pinko activity too :-D
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8-03-2007 @ 11:08PM
Katie said...
Bobbybuz - Armonk is actually rather small, and very suburban. My dad is a graduate of the town's highschool, and it's far from a city. Not critcizing, just providing more background/visual info for followers of this show
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8-03-2007 @ 11:40PM
Bob Sassone said...
Yes, I do know that it's Lady Chatterly's Lover. It was a typo.
I did get the feeling that Don is somewhat suicidal, but I'm not going to come to that conclusion yet. There are certainly some interesting developments starting though. Not sure what's up with his name on the train though, since that army medal does have "Don Draper" on it.
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8-04-2007 @ 10:24PM
khamel said...
this is a gatsby situation. he totally reinvented himself after the army (probably had a bad/embarassing childhood) and when he finally thinks hes clear of his old self, someone from the army sees him again.
you sure don draper is on the medal? if so, that makes the gatsby part even more likely. maybe someone that he served with who died?
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8-05-2007 @ 12:16PM
tbc said...
The case of the medal read: Donald Francis Draper
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8-05-2007 @ 2:35PM
Xurry said...
"DICK WHITMAN" comment isn't a mistake. Did a quick google, and sure enough, there's a cast credit for a "YOUNG DICK WHITMAN."
http://tv.yahoo.com/show/39828/castcrew
Scroll down and you'll see it, played by Brandon Killham. However, it's not on his IMBD database yet, so maybe it's a slip by Yahoo.
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8-09-2007 @ 12:33PM
Roberta said...
This episode was stunning. This is the one that hooked me. This show is not for the average viewer... it is slow and in some ways subtle. It is sexy, but not Sopranos sexy.
Nice catch, Katie, about the train as suicide theme... I'd missed that connection. (Got the theme, just forgotten the meeting excuse.)
I loved Rachel's line about expecting me to live my life alongside yours (or something like that only better). The messages about women and feminism in the show continues to deepen my own thinking about all of it.
I wondered about the Dick Whitman, if it was a real secret past or metaphorical. Now that you guys have cleared that up, what is the meaning? That he feels so removed from his current life that he may as well have a secret identity? That he also feels so removed from his past that he may as well have been someone else? To me, Don's biggest symptom of depression is an experience of disconnect; not just feeling different from other people, but I get a sense that there is a fog around him. And I think the scene on the train shows him succumbing to the fog... he doesn't know this guy, but he can't bring himself to address it. And if he had known the guy, he'd have reacted the same way. That was the purpose, I feel, of having the scene be deliberately confusing to the viewers.
Also he is drawn to these amazing women who briefly break through the fog, but the connection is destined to fail. The woman with whom he is having the affair whose name I can't remember insists on distance (appropriately so) by her 'credo' and also her 'don't you talk about your wife' rule. So he can't come all the way in. And Rachel is right... a part-time secret affair is no life, and ultimately not real intimacy.
The fact that they gave half the show to that party... it was exquisite torture. I don't know the story of the Marriage of Figaro, but as I kept expecting the party scene to end and go back to the office, with each painfully building moment where that didn't happen, the whole thing was building in its tragedy, and it ultimately had an operatic quality.
I'm in.
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