Mad Men – “Babylon”

“Babylon”

Season One, Episode Six

In the world of Mad Men, normalcy is the goal: for Don Draper, it’s bringing his wife breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. Of course, as he travels up the stairs, he losing his footing and everything smashes around him. Cue the flashback to his brother’s birth, and another sign that Donald Draper’s life is a giant lie just waiting to be smashed like the falling breakfast tray.

Yes, the opening of “Babylon” is not exactly subtle, but this is an episode that is all about the hidden becoming revealed, the secrets becoming part of common knowledge. The central attempt to commodify Israel into a tourism destination for Americans is about taking a secret and turning it into common knowledge, but there the ad men get to put their spin on it; the facts are one thing, but with the right treatment they can become something far more profound. This episode is about the people who need to spin their own lives, and the one person who’s about to start spinning for others.

And in the meantime, you’re stuck in exile; and as a series about people who find themselves searching to avoid such a position, Mad Men flourishes.

First and foremost, the big news in the episode is the emergence of both Christina Hendricks’ Joan and John Slattery’s Roger Sterling to our narrative. While not quite on the level of Pete, Peggy or Don, these characters are certainly still important parts of the show’s milieu. Roger isn’t the first man we’ve seen with extra-marital affairs, but he’s the most honest about it. With Don we sense that there’s something deeper behind his various connections with women, an inner struggle relating to his own identity issues. For Roger, it’s far more simple: as he says to Joan, “Before I met you, I wanted to leave my wife.”

It’s a best of both worlds scenario, for Roger – he has his fling with the attractive redhead for fun, and then his wife for the sake of appearance. He revels in this relationship, while it never seems like Don is enjoying himself in the same way (And his flings aren’t new, even with Midge he barely cracks a smile). A later episode will delve further into the difference between these men and their affairs, but the sneaking around is indeed Roger’s favourite but Don’s least favourite part.

The new client at Sterling Cooper, meanwhile, wants to turn Israel into a tourist attraction (The Middle East’s “Rome” is their pitch); however, as Don notes, to Americans “Israel is a quasi-communist state where women have guns and it’s full of Jewish people…well, they’re not all Jewish, let’s not forget there’s also Arabs.” Armed with a copy of Exodus, a novel by Leon Uris that details the creation of the country, Don has nothing until he finds an excuse to call on Rachel Menken, and embrace his own secretive side.

Rachel’s little speech is almost too on-the-nose for my sake, as she discusses what Israel is to her. It’s a utopia, a place where you don’t have to live but where you want to live, and place that’s more dream than reality. Of course, by this metaphor, Don Draper’s life is a whole host of Israel’s, all shrouding a reality that he is clearly at least somewhat discontent with (albeit in ways that he himself doesn’t seem to really understand, and that we as the audience get a greater glimpse of in the episodes to come). Like all of his relationships, this is more about him than her – it’s almost weird to get her side of the conversation as she discusses him with her sister, actually.

Further playing into the same theme, I love the parallel between this theme of appearance and reality that we see with the one-way mirror that separates the horny ad men from the secretarial pool. The whole point of the exercise is to capture them at their most vulnerable, their most honest; it is clear who amongst them is skilled at keeping things close to the chest when Peggy barely even moves, instead scanning the room and thinking (cherish the thought) about what is going on around her. The rest of the women are dazzled by lipsticks and glamour, and all she can do is sit back and look around her.

I love her stumbling upon something that sparks, something that really clicks with that the client is looking for. Her approach is refined, measured – it’s everything that her boss tries to get across. Brainstorming, it seems, is up her alley; and while it may be like a dog playing the piano to the men of Sterling Cooper, it’s also something that leads to a rather great opportunity of writing copy for Belle Jolie lipstick.

And Joan’s in on the game, playfully nodding to the looming threat and even showing off for the men behind the mirror. Of course, this is as much a game as it is for Peggy, but she knows what’s coming – she’s the liasion with the authority, the one who has an inside track and who isn’t willing to give it up. She pulls out the Marshall McLuhan on Peggy, and it’s what she lives her life by: the medium is the message. That Peggy was noticed by the other men bothered her, as it limited her control; without that control, she loses what she believes defines her. She believes that she is the right medium for all of the important things, and she models her life on it.

And even after an entire season, I don’t think we get to know the real Joan – even here, in Christina Hendricks’ Emmy submission, there is never a sense that we’re seeing something real. When with Roger, she is more frank but just as committed to playing the part at hand. One of the things that makes the show so realistic is that everyone is acting, that everyone is having to hide secrets and appear as something they’re not, and Joan always feels the most committed. As Don’s commitment wavers while wading his way through various conquests, and as Roger’s commitment will eventually be tested by other complications, Joan forever remains perfectly uniform, ideal in her slavery to expectation.

Next up: “Red in the Face,” probably one of the weaker episodes of the season although not without merit.