West Coast time has interfered with my patriotic allegiance to Mad Men, but I’ve decided to prioritize my relationship with Matt Weiner and friends over my relationships with peers and sleep and the gym.
Here are some brief, out of context thoughts on the last two episodes of Mad Men before we discuss “Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency” tomorrow.
The Arrangements: The Olson Twins
No, they’re not actually twins, but how could I resist? In an episode overtly focusing on parenting, with a progression of Sally’s lack thereof, Jai Alai Jr and Jai Alai Sr (how did everyone on the internet know how to spell that but me?), Betty and Gene, and the orphan Don, I was most intrigued by Peggy’s relationship to her mother and sister.
Peggy’s very Catholic mother and resentful sister were driving forces in season 2, but at that point I resented their presence on the show as they took Peggy away from Sterling Cooper and into a home where she was anything but powerful and proactive. With their appearance in “The Arrangements,” however, that religious background serves as a prologue to Peggy’s enlightenment from this season. We have seen her have a one night stand with the college boy, whereas we did not see her sleep with Pete, because we and Peggy are prepared for that intense intimacy; we have seen her smoke pot because we and Peggy are ready for the 1960s to take off. The temporal setting of this season segues beautifully into a confrontation with Peggy’s mother’s traditional, narrow-minded mother.
Where last season Peggy’s sister was the destructive, jealous force on Peggy, as she told the priest about Peggy’s illegitimate child with Pete, in “The Arrangements” Peggy’s mother serves that role. Both mother and sister are given to jealousy, though now Peggy’s mother is jealous of her daughter not needing her anymore and robbing her of the life she expects. Her fixation on the death of the Pope, “fifty minutes of news and nothing about the Holy Father,” shows her tunnel vision of the world: the only news content that matters is that concerning the Pope, and she is aware of no other changes in the world except the end of what she knows. Her relationship to the television is a less formal version of her relationship with the sermons at church. When Peggy leaves in their final scene, the mother listens to a speech by President Kennedy, presumably taking away a very different message: to her, Kennedy is the Catholic president; to Peggy’s generation, Kennedy is the progressive president. Kennedy’s familiarity soothes the mother, and his promise for tomorrow soothes her daughters.
Peggy’s sister seems to have gained perspective since her mother moved in with her. She now seems in awe of Peggy’s freedom, not jealous of it: “You’re gonna be one of those girls?” she asks. “I am one of those girls,” Peggy informs her. Last season, Peggy spent time at her house doing penance for nearly becoming one of those girls; now, she embraces it.
The sister is also conditioned by a deteriorating mother. She attacks the TV when it fails to work, and the sister chastises her for disrespecting her property. Not only does the mother fail to embrace new technology, but she is destructive of and disrespectful towards her children. Peggy’s sister has become caretaker for her mother in the same way that Betty is burdened by Gene. For Peggy and her sister, however, their mother’s lack of faith in their competence is unfounded, unlike Gene. When Peggy buys her mother a new TV, her mother asks, “Was that all this noise? Why didn’t you get Jerry to help,” and Peggy’s sister must remind her, “Say thank you, Ma.” Though this could be construed as a portrayal of an ungrateful older generation, I think Weiner more so examines the generation’s inability to stop change and its reaction to that helplessness.
A Peggy Sandwich
For example, the mother reacts to Peggy’s description of her bad Brooklyn apartment with, “your father and I lived with Grandma and Grandpa for years.” She is relieved to hear that Peggy is, to at least some extent, following in her footsteps and staying close to the nest. Compare this to Gene, who laments that with Betty, “That’s my fault for shielding you from all the dangers out there.” Peggy’s mother seeks both to shield her daughter from the dangers she is aware of only obliquely and to insulate herself from any further sins or evils. “I guess I’m the kind of mother who’d rather have a new TV than a daughter,” she snaps. “You bought a new TV because you think I was born yesterday.” The TV is certainly a bribe, but the mother objects less to the bribe itself (she turns on the TV as Peggy walks away) than to the change the TV itself represents. The TV showcases Peggy’s independence, which is contrary to the mother’s definition of a daughter, and mature understanding of her mother’s needs. I love the line about being born yesterday for its double meaning: obviously, it’s a line that everyone’s mother has said; on a secondary level, it addresses the disdain Peggy’s mother has towards all things new. “You belong in the city” becomes her insult, representing a classic middle class perception of dirty urban life dating back to the 1900s. The jarring juxtaposition of her reference to “this broken heart I’m carrying” and her cruel insult, “you’ll get raped, you know that?” displays her emotional instability. I’m not sure if rape is supposed to refer to Pete and Peggy’s pregnancy or to encapsulate the previous generation’s attitudes towards sex, but regardless it offers an extreme in intergenerational relations. It will be interesting to see if Peggy comes back home after all this. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” reasons her sister. With that reaction and the death of Gene, it seems that the older generation has no power anymore.
While Hoho’s connection to his father is an extreme of wealth and delusion, the images of parents and daughters in particular was fascinating in “The Arrangements.” On the one hand, we have Pete and Hoho competing with their fathers’ expectations for how they confront the dangers of the world; on the other, we have Peggy and Betty and Sally being alternately nurtured by their parents or rejected with anger and frustration. The standard of masculinity remains the same, while the women face a new day and new opposition in their parents.
The Fog: “Everything, and So Much of It”
I don’t mean to rip off Alan Sepinwall any more than I have to, but his choice of quotation is perfect for capturing the episode. While the crux of the episode falls with the birth of Eugene Scott Draper and Betty’s hallucinations in childbirth, issues of “experience” continue to pop up: whether you’re new or old; whether you’re alone or not; these are subsets of the American Dream as referred to by Pete Campbell.
Don and Betty are veterans for the arrival of their third child, while the prison guard Dennis in the waiting room eagerly anticipates the birth of his first child. For the guard, the birth is a beginning: “this is a fresh start…I’m gonna be a better man.” His opportunity for positive reinvention, however, is for Don a commitment to the life he wants to abandon and has tried to forget all three seasons. Dennis looks forward to meeting his son, “you throw the ball around?” he asks Don, who replies, “not enough,” as Don thinks about all the obligatory parenting that lies ahead. Presumably Dennis is in the waiting room because his wife has a complication, but Don is waiting by choice. He avoids the physical and emotional proximity of childbirth, leaving the audience once again to know Betty in a way that he cannot.
Betty’s perception of their marriage is the opposite of Don’s in that she thinks they are too isolated from one another. She begs for Don as she lies alone in childbirth and lashes out against the nurse who tries to get close. Betty’s most comforting hallucination, that of her mother and father in her kitchen, takes her to a place where she is cared for and taken care of by other people. Further, Betty recreates that same physical beauty when she is holding her baby and looking down on her family, separated from them by a window that captures their image with the quality of a picture or video camera.
Happily Locked Away
When Don comes in after the birth to meet Betty and his son, Betty not only looks a hot mess but also calls her son a she. “You look awful,” Betty tells Don, only to add later “I need to put my face on.” “You look beautiful, Bets,” Don replies perfunctorily. When together, the two relate to one another only superficially, refusing to listen or see each other. Compare the scene between Betty and Don with his phone conversation with Sally’s teacher (phone conversations in which you see both people in separate shots came up several times in the episode), and one finds that the intimacy is stronger through ye olde telephone than face to face. This argues that the surface of “together” or “alone” is not as simple or happy as it seems. And that Don will get with Sally’s teacher. Moving away from the social themes, this episode gets back to Mad Men’s roots in the nature of humanity and happiness and desire.
These ideas of connection and relationship also apply to Peggy and Pete, who are brought together in the episode by Duck’s job offer to switch to Grey. Duck asserts, “You two have a secret relationship,” referring not to their baby boy somewhere over the rainbow but their takedown of Freddy Rumsen. Though the moment is clearly intended to make the audience and the two Ps jump, it also serves to remind us of the connection between the two that has been dormant since the season two finale. Only in the season premiere did Pete refer briefly and disdainfully to Peggy’s role in all of his accounts; here he maintains that condescension, but we later learn it’s an act. Actors playing characters who act…how meta. As Pete later reminds Peggy, “your decisions affect me.”
Mmm whatcha say?
For Peggy, the interaction with Duck, acted as it may be on his part, represents a closeness and compassion that Don has yet to exhibit. “No mortgage, no family, you’re a free-wheeling career gal with great ideas,” Duck assures her. That’s career assurance to Peggy, but I think it reminds her even more of the fact that she’s alone in the business. With that in mind, she goes to Don for some kind of assurance that she matters to someone at Sterling Cooper, but she is knocking on the wrong door. In response to her deeply profound realization about him, “you have everything, and so much of it,” Don rejects her with, “what do you want me to say?” That, compared to Duck’s comments, turns Peggy’s “It’s not a good time for me, Don” into “what if this is my time?” The need not to be alone and the desire to be able to be alone are opposed here, with Don incapable of understanding the latter in Peggy. Don in the workplace reminds me of Dennis’ description of working in the prison: “You’re outnumbered, but you’ve got the power, kind of like being a king.”
While all of this is very new territory for Peggy and Pete, Don and Betty are constantly reminded of their own life cycle. The episode ends with Betty awoken by her crying son, only to realize that she has to go take care of him on her own and that nothing has changed. The moment is much more powerful with sound than screen capture, so just imagine what it’s like to hear a baby cry on an airplane and you’ll understand Betty’s pain.
“The Fog” tied the abstractions of the emotional fog to concrete lines and interactions, a combination that suggests to me the best is yet to come from this season. And I swear on January Jones’ bone structure I’ll write about the new episode tomorrow.
