Tag Archives: Don Draper

October 13, 2008 · 12:11 am

Mad Men – “The Jet Set”

“The Jet Set”

October 12th, 2008

When most people arrive at their travel destination without their suitcase, they’re angry; when Don Draper arrives without his luggage, it provides a freedom that allows him to break free into (long) uncharted territory.

“The Jet Set” follows Don on a journey of sorts, as he flees the rigidity and direness of Cold War aerospace technology and the schmoozing of pie in the sky engineers searching to create the superhuman astronaut, instead jumping in a car with a young woman named Joy who, more than his meetings, offers hope for her her eponymous emotion. As he encounters those filthy rich and adventurous individuals known as the Jet Set, he also encounters a life that is so unlike his own it nearly scares him back to safety, but then surprisingly scares him back to something difference altogether.

There’s a lot of people who are reverting back to older perspectives here, some in desperate search of former glory or others who are simply collateral damage in the wake of the office’s bigotry. For the most part, it’s a stark reminder that the lives of our characters are the polar opposite of the show’s airborne guests: while they fly from exotic location to exotic location, our characters are stuck in place, struggling to expand their horizons at anything close to jet speed.

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October 6, 2008 · 1:13 am

Mad Men – “The Inheritance”

“The Inheritance”

October 5th, 2008

Pete Campbell has inherited a lot of things from his parents, but one of them might well be his fundamental lack of humanity. As he greets his mother before a short meeting, they embrace by touching each other’s faces: not with any sort of kissing motion, but this awkward greeting that’s not a hug but rather just a proximity that seems to indicate that they are happy to see one another. But it is this coldness, that his mother seems to share, which makes Pete so incapable of handling the financial crisis she is in, and the own family drama that plagues his home life.

Betty Draper inherited from her mother her looks but also her fragile nature. She has many of her mother tendencies, and even has a housekeeper who appears to have raised her much as Carla is raising Sally and Bobby for most of the episode. It is these qualities, then, which make her so unable to deal with the reality of her father’s ailing health, and why her family didn’t even tell her about his failing in order to help continue her shield from the cold reality around her.

Whereas Don Draper has spent decades resolving his relationship with his father (although last week indicated he still sees that side of him), the inability to handle what they’ve inherited from a generation past is what holds Pete and Betty back, what keeps them from becoming fully realized members of society. What “The Inheritance” becomes is less a mediation on any pivotal moment in either of their development, but a demonstration over a number of days of their reactions to these ideas being tested, of their innocence or coldness rising in opposition to something that needs to be said or done.

The result is an episode that doesn’t quite hit as hard as the past few episodes on an emotional level, and feels like it doesn’t really add things to our story; that being said, it also feels distinctly like Matthew Weiner and Co. moving pieces around in preparation for something larger.

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September 29, 2008 · 12:23 am

Mad Men – “Six Month Leave”

“Six Month Leave”

September 28th, 2008

“Some People Just Hide in Plain Sight”

On the surface, Marilyn Monroe was the picture of grace and beauty, living the Hollywood dream and conquering the globe in the process. Of course, inside she was emotionally distraught, and her suicide rocked America in August, 1962. In the world of Mad Men, it rocks the secretarial pool at Sterling Cooper, sending them to the kleenex boxes and making them all question, at least a little bit, the value of life.

But that quote, coming from the elevator man of all people, is the driving force behind this series, particularly for Don Draper: he can’t actually hide away from everyone, he needs to be out there and available even while hiding pains as deep as his traumatic family past and as recent as his separation from Betty. Peggy may have hid in the months after her pregnancy, but now she’s back at work and having to act as if none of it is there, struggling while all eyes remain on her in her new success.

But this episode is all about those people who can’t hide in plain sight, who based on either inexperience or circumstance are no longer able to (or desiring to) hide something about themselves. In the case of Freddy Rumsen, our zipper musician extraordinaire, his habits have long been known by those in the office, but there comes a time when you get too comfortable and what was hidden becomes clear to too many people or, more accurately, to the wrong people. In the case of Betty Draper, she’s been so used to hiding her feelings that she has no idea how to express her displeasure, unsure of what she wants other than to be left alone and allowed to take care of her own life for a change.

While a less careful show might be running dangerously close to hammering this home a bit too hard at this point, “Six Month Leave” has more than enough moments of emotional discovery to feel like a new step into this particular subject, one of the show’s (and my) favourites.

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September 15, 2008 · 9:41 pm

Mad Men – “A Night to Remember”

“A Night to Remember”

September 14th, 2008

Describing Betty Draper to the representatives from Heineken, Duck Phillips identifies her as “well off and educated.” Now, in the context of the scene, we breeze right by it: they’re selling this pitch, so it’s not like anyone’s going to put on the brakes. However, let’s be frank: to this point, and even after the events of the episode, would anyone really consider Betty Draper to be educated?

This isn’t to say that she is not intelligent, or that she is not capable of achieving great things, but rather that her tragic flaw is her ignorance to the outside world, to the world that she is constantly being surrounded by. When she becomes the punchline of Don’s pitch to Heineken, she isn’t necessarily just reacting to Don’s use of her as a tool: rather, it’s that he knows better than she does what her role is, what demographic she’s in, and what she’s likely to buy when she goes to the grocery store.

But that’s Don’s job, as it is Peggy’s: it’s their job to tell people what they want. It’s just that, as both found out in this episode, you need to know your audience: whether your wife or the Catholic Church, there are certain rules that need to be followed if you’re going to let your role in the ad game dictate the rest of your life decisions. And, as seen with Don, Peggy and Joan, the balance between these two sides of one’s life, in whatever form they take, will eventually get the better of you.

And when that happens, as it did to Betty Draper who doesn’t even have a single role she could really latch onto in her lowest moments, it will serve as…well, you can read the title of the episode, you know where this is going.

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August 17, 2008 · 11:37 pm

Mad Men – “Three Sundays”

“Three Sundays”

August 17th, 2008

When Father Gil (Guest star Colin Hanks) stops by to the Olsen household for a dinner party, he is asked to say grace. He gives a short little moment of reflection on the meal in front of them, and Peggy’s Mother commends him on the fine words and asks if he’s going to say grace now. He quickly breaks into the traditional verse.

Roger’s daughter, meanwhile, is engaged. Her mother wants a wedding, a big gala where all of their friends can come and enjoy, but she isn’t on the same page: the young Ms. Sterling does want to feel like she needs to prove her love to anyone in some grand ceremony after only two months of engagement. Eventually, it seems settled: like it or not, a big wedding is simply unavoidable.

We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this: as my brother (who just finished the first season) noted, the 60s is a decade of change and Mad Men is a show about people of an older era. While this is not yet the time when there is an active war between these two generations, the battlegrounds are being drawn: as Don himself says, “We have a lot of bricks, but we don’t know what the building looks like.”

But, slowly but surely, the bricks are falling into place; and over these “Three Sundays,” a lot happens to lay a foundation.

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June 23, 2008 · 12:48 am

Mad Men – “Marriage of Figaro”

“Marriage of Figaro”

Season One, Episode Three

One of the strengths of Mad Men is its ability to capture lightning in a bottle, taking moments or elements of the 1960s and building off of them. In the pilot, this felt clunky and forced, but as time has moved on things have changed: these small elements have become an important but not integral element of the story. The plot doesn’t rely on these little moments, but rather uses them to help explain and expand upon both story and characterization.

“Marriage of Figaro” is not yet in the shape of a normal episode of the series, still needing to clearly point out the show’s central divide: in a way that few episodes mimic, the action is split directly in half as we first follow Don’s life in the city before transitioning into his daughter’s birthday party in the suburbs. The only thing connecting these two parts, on the surface, is Don Draper, but little bits of information and intrigue follow (Whether it’s romantic entanglements or the impact of the Volkswagen ad that has everyone talking).

The result is that the episode is indeed a Don story, never quite fully diving into the series’ other various narratives. There are some pieces laid down here, though, that will become very important for the future; plus, when I say it’s a Don story, that’s not a bad thing in the least.

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