(S01E06)
"It was interesting...like watching a dog trying to play the piano." - ad guy Fred, about Peggy's great lipstick ideas.
Someone sent me an e-mail after last week's episode, and the person said that they didn't like Mad Men because "nothing ever happens." I disagree with this statement strongly, but I know what they mean. Nothing ever happens in the sense that there aren't any cliffhangers before each commercial, there aren't any explosions or murders, and there isn't some incredible event that pushes the show in another direction for the next episode. But to say that "nothing every happens" as a general statement about each episode is proof, I think, that we've been conditioned to expect all shows to be the same, and if they have a different pace then it's "boring" or "nothing ever happens."
If Mad Men is boring, then all shows should be this boring.
So Joan is having an affair with Roger. That slut! I'm talking about Roger. We met his wife and daughter this episode, and for some reason I just didn't think he was cheating on his wife. His daughter seems to have the hots for Don (wouldn't that be an interesting plot development down the road if that were to ever happen). I like how when Roger tells his daughter that he likes her pigtails because "it makes you look young," she responds by saying, "I like your hair daddy because it makes you look old").
This episode was about lipstick and Israel. Not necessarily in that order. Don and the guys have to come up with an ad campaign for Israel as a vacation spot ("How can we do that when Bermuda is only 3 hours away?"). This isn't easy, so Don calls Mencken for an "expert's opinion" on Jews and Israel ("Am I the only Jew you know in New York?"). He also wants to have an affair with her while he's having an affair with Midge and also taking care of wife Betty and his kids. All while smoking constantly. He's a multitasker.
This opens up some rather blunt and frank talk about Israel and Jews that you don't hear that much on modern-day set shows. Mad Men has gotten a lot of kudos for it's writing and dialogue, and this is another example. It's an interesting balancing act, trying to talk about people and society and places and products from 47 years ago without doing it just because it's so "cool" to contrast how things were back then with the way they are now. If it's too obvious it would seem gimmicky. This show does it just right. There's no hitting over the head with pop culture and music references. They do it through products in the background and ad campaigns and discussions of the book "Exodus" and Rona Jaffe and IBM typewriters and the clothes and all that cigarette smoke. Well done.
When Mencken leaves their lunch meeting after telling Don all she seems to know about her people, Don goes over to Midge's. They start to do it, and there's a knock at the door. It's Roy, another friend of Midge's. He convinces Don and Midge to go to a poetry reading with him. Don doesn't want to go, but ends up going. When he's there we're treated to a guy on stage reading wedding announcements from the paper and then a group of three Jewish men singing a song ("Babylon"), which I'm sure will give Don some idea about how to approach the ad campaign (one small quibble I have about this show is that there always seems to be a handy parallel in another plot to help Don with his campaigns - Betty even tells him about a Jewish boy she kissed once - but it's a small quibble.) The scene does provide some humorous moments. It's great to see Don in his clean suit and shoes hanging out with beatniks, and when he asks Roy, "So Roy, if you had a job, what would you do?" I laughed out loud.
Oh, back to the lipstick. A makeup company hires Sterling Cooper so Fred and Joan and the guys get a bunch of lipstick samples and let the girls in the office (or as Fred calls them, "the chickens") try a bunch of different colors (while being watched behind a two-way mirror - just when I thought of a masturbation joke one of the ad guys makes one too). They all try different colors except Peggy, who doesn't try any because her color was taken. She knows what she likes. Fred and Sal find this interesting, and Fred likes her description of a trash barrel filled with lipstick-stained tissues as a "basket of kisses," so she's going to get a chance to work on the campaign (side note: it was driving me crazy where I'd seen Fred before, and checking online I found out it's Joel Murray, who played Danny on Still Standing.)
I haven't mentioned the surreal flashback at the start of the episode, when Don falls down the stairs and looks across the room and sees his childhood "Dick" self on the floor, surrounded by his parents and his new baby brother Adam, who he paid off last episode to leave town. (Update: as readers have pointed out, this flashback shows that Don might be Jewish, which brings a whole new dimension to why he's keeping his life a secret).
So in this episode we have a flashback that shows Don is feeling guilty about his little bro, we find out that Roger is sleeping with Joan, we see the other part of Midge's world start to creep into her relationship with Don, and we see Peggy get some possible ad work at the office (and maybe a hint of jealousy from Joan?). Who says nothing ever happens on this show?
Next week: Nixon, Helen, and Glen the creepy kid!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
8-24-2007 @ 3:36AM
BC said...
The show has been deservedly praised for the realism of its background texture, but after watching the opening of tonight's show it occurred to me that except for the scene at the birthday party where one of the rambunctious boys gets cuffed across the face by a man who isn't his father, the children on this show are unusually coddled.
I guarantee that in a majority of 1960 households, once a father who fell down the stairs after stepping on child's toy ascertained that he was mostly undamaged, the child who left the toy would be receiving a sound thrashing, not being taken on an outing with balloons, Mother's Day or not. It's a minor point, but amid all the institutional sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism it stands out.
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8-24-2007 @ 4:48AM
Bill said...
That dog/piano line was one of the meanest/funniest things I've ever heard on TV.
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8-24-2007 @ 9:05AM
draper said...
I kinda get why some people say that nothing ever happens and I have to agree. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the show. On the contrary, I really like that it's slow-paced. Makes it easier to enjoy the great dialogues.
But let's get back to this episode...
Sometimes it's good to be the boss... or John Slattery. Yeah, I like Joan a lot, guilty as charged.
Anyway, I'm not sure yet how I feel about Don's flashback scene. I don't really see where this storyline is going. It's a little confusing although quite intriguing too.
The two-way mirror scene was just brilliant. Put them in front of a bunch of young women and those grown up men will turn back into teenage boys in less time than it takes Roger to cheat on his wife. By the way, I should have guessed than he and Joan were sleeping together, it makes a lot of sense.
The poetry reading was also quite enjoyable. Don didn't fit in at all and I couldn't help but laugh at the girl's weird story about Castro.
Don still wants to get in Rachel's pants but we already knew that. They had an interesting talk but asking her to dinner under that kind false pretenses probably wasn't the right way to go. Yet it did seem to remind Rachel of how much she likes Don. Even if she does, I don't think that he really wants a serious relationship. I still can't figure out who Don truly loves, or rather if he does truly love one of his women.
I really enjoyed this episode, a lot more than the previous one.
http://www.mad-men-tv.com
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8-24-2007 @ 9:27AM
R-Bro said...
I've seen the first two episodes; loved the first, was bored silly by the second. A show needs *some* kind of underlying plot to drive it, and so far this one is mostly a character study. I'll try one more ep and see if it catches me again.
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8-24-2007 @ 9:31AM
mad for mad men said...
Come on, people! It seems to me you're missing one of the most significant points of the whole episode. Don's flashback to his boyhood fall downstairs revealed that he/Dick Wittman comes from a Jewish family: the mother's comments about brother Adam ("a blessing from the Lord," "named after the first man") seemed to indicate, if indirectly, they'd just had Adam's bris.
So the self-invented WASP "Don Draper" was confronted throughout this episode with reminders of what it meant to be Jewish in America (and Israel) in 1960, and dealing with the feelings that were being stirred up within himself, not least of which is his attraction to Rachel. Surely his powerful, subtle emotional reaction at the end (beautifully played by Jon Hamm) to the "Waters of Babylon" was more than simple satisfaction at finding a theme for the Israeli ad campaign!
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8-24-2007 @ 9:51AM
Karen said...
This show is awesome. It is even enjoyable to watch without dialog...it is beautifully shot!
The parallels bother me some too, becaues then it becomes so obvious as to how they are going to work things together, but I still find this the MOST enjoyable show on TV.
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8-24-2007 @ 10:18AM
Alan said...
I agree with that mad for mad men, i also think he is running fro his jewish past.
I have to say this show has been a really welcome suprise. My only gripe is Comcast seems to have gotten rid of the free HD next day episodes of Mad Men, not sure why. But this is a really well written and executed show.
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8-24-2007 @ 10:39AM
bcarter3 said...
Except for the occasional slip--IBM Selectrics weren't in
use in 1960, fr'instance--this show has been stunningly accurate in getting period details right. But there was one big anachronism in last night's show: Near the end, Joan drops the line, "'The medium is the message', as they say.
"Marshall McLuhan didn't coin that phrase until
1964, and it wasn't in general circulation until several years later.
I also noticed that Don's office has drop-down ceiling panels. Thought they came in later.
(I'm not usually so nit-picky, but when something is done as brilliantly as it's done on this show, any
little flaw jumps right out.)
That said, I think "Mad Men" and "Damages" are easily the 2 best tv shows I've seen this year.
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8-24-2007 @ 10:41AM
SethDavis said...
Don/Dick wasn't Jewish. The kid was just born, the bris usually happens a week or so after the birth. And if it was the bris, where was the moyel?
Furthmore, Christians believe in both the old and new testaments. If I remember my hebrew school, that means Adam was the first man in both.
Betty may be the shiksa queen, but his attraction to dark-haired women doesn't make him Jewish. In fact, if you've ever seen any Woody Allen movies, you'd know the attraction is to the former, never the latter.
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8-24-2007 @ 10:46AM
Lou said...
I also think that the VW "Lemon" ad was later than 1960.
so the show isn't strictly sticking to the real calendar
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8-24-2007 @ 10:50AM
Lou said...
#8,
You mean he didn't coin it publically...maybe he overheard it at a beatnick poetry reading....
(evil laugh goes here)
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8-24-2007 @ 10:58AM
Lou said...
sorry, misread..I meant to say maybe he got the line fom a busty redhead. (loves me some Saffron Reynolds!)
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8-24-2007 @ 11:11AM
Walt said...
I watched enough of it to notice that it's pretty well done, and yet found no compelling reason to watch it.
You can have the best setting and dialogue around, but if you don't have characters your audience directly associates with, you're going to have to find a reason for your show to exist.
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8-24-2007 @ 12:04PM
khamel said...
I agree with Seth that he's not necessarily Jewish. I don't know anything about a bris so I could be totally wrong but it didn't seem like that to me. Wasn't the baby just born? They just gave him a name. And isn't using the phrase "The Lord" a more christian phrase (wouldn't a Jewish family use a hebrew word? kind of a stretch i realize).
i've said it week after week, hes living someone else's life - or atleast the life that someone who died with him in WWII would be living if he hadn't died. Great Gatsby Redux.
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8-24-2007 @ 12:29PM
Steven Rubio said...
I just finished watching on Comcast HD On Demand, so Alan might want to check again, just in case.
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8-24-2007 @ 1:20PM
Kate McMains said...
The woman who gave birth the Don's brother is not Don's mother (he says's the baby is not his brother, and his uncle replies that they have the same father). So, there's no need for a bris if the new baby's mother is not Jewish. Don's absent mother could have been Jewish, which would make him a jew.
Don at the boho club was a riot...esp. his rebuttal lines about Broadway and how he slept at night (on a bed of money).
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8-24-2007 @ 3:47PM
Karen said...
"(Update: as readers have pointed out, this flashback shows that Don might be Jewish, which brings a whole new dimension to why he's keeping his life a secret)."
Yeah, because "Dick Whitman" is such a yiddische name.
And, Bob, is this going to be another show where, if anyone criticizes it, it's because we're not smart enough to get it? "But to say that "nothing every happens" as a general statement about each episode is proof, I think, that we've been conditioned to expect all shows to be the same, and if they have a different pace then it's "boring" or "nothing ever happens."" Oh, puh-leeze. You just love to insult us, don't you? I'm still watching the show because I'm intrigued by where they're going to try to take it. But this is a show that's ALL sizzle and no steak. They're so determined to get every last period detail right down to the ash level on the tabletops that they don't seem to care about making any of their characters believable. Peggy? C'mon! She shows up as a young innocent, sleeps with the betrothed brat of the office at the end of her first day, freaks out when she finds out that her boss also cheats, and now she's some sort of copy-writing whiz? She's a device--all of these characters are devices to make points, none of which are fully developed in the actual plotting. They're like avatars that Weiner is using to act out his idea of a mythic past.
That "dog playing a piano" line? A complete ripoff of Samuel Johnson's comment about women writing being like a dog walking on its hind legs: "the wonder isn't that they do it well, but that they do it at all." Which was an understandable sentiment in the 18th century, less so in the mid-20th. Haven't the men of Sterling Cooper heard of Lois Wyse--the ad-woman who came up with "With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good"? There were plenty of top adwomen by 1960.
Nothing really rings true on this show. (I love the notion of ethnic anthropology as....foreplay? But it's damn stylish, that's for sure.
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8-24-2007 @ 3:53PM
Karen said...
There's no way that was a bris. That nurse was carrying out a basin with blood-soaked rags--circumcision doesn't produce that much blood. Plus, they said "we want you to meet someone"--I doubt they'd have hidden the new brother from Dick for 8 days (the time period between birth and the bris).
And I'm pretty sure remarks like "a blessing from the Lord" and "named for the first man" resonate in the Christian tradition as well. Nor is "Adam" an exclusively Jewish name.
@1--dead on with the comment about the repercussions for the toy on the staircase. I don't even want to think about what my father would have done if I'd caused him to fall down the stairs. In 1961 (when I was 3), I left my tricycle in the driveway after my dad told me to put it away, and he accidentally ran over it with the car. I wasn't allowed to have a bike of any kind until I was 9, when I got my big sister's hand-me-down.
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8-24-2007 @ 4:20PM
Bob Sassone said...
All these comments just illustrate why I said "might be" when it comes Don being Jewish.
Karen: I don't see anything wrong with Weiner using avatars to act out a mythic past. But I also just see them as well-drawn, complex characters, not the one-note characters you usually see on television. The fact that Peggy can be the young newbie *and* the girl who sleeps with Pete, the fact that Don can be the nice guy of the group but also cheating on his wife, that's intriguing to me.
As for insulting anyone, I really don't think I did that. Though you come close to doing it to me.
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8-24-2007 @ 4:47PM
Katie said...
Does anyone think Salvatore is in the closet?
Well, I do, and I can definitely see this as a potential plot line in the future for his character. If you think I'm crazy for thinking this, just review his behavior, mannerisms, and comments, and how they contrast with all his male co-workers.
I'm not sure whether this observation of behavior is obvious to everyone or if it's something I'm imagining, but I'm just throwing it out there to see if anyone has picked up on this too.
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