Matt Weiner’s foot fetish took a turn for the worse in the latest episode of Mad Men. The most unexpected moment of last night, Lois running over Guy’s prized right foot with a John Deere, dominates the morning after discussion in the same way that Roger’s blackface routine did three weeks ago. Weiner’s bold forays into racial and horror television extremes have generated a lot of press for AMC’s little show that could, which took home the Emmys for Best Drama and Best Dramatic Writing last night (Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss fell prey to the veterans of Bryan Cranston and Glenn Close respectively in the acting awards).
That was my reaction too!
In “Out of Town,” Sal quotes Balzac, “Our greatest fears lie in anticipation,” to the grumpy London Fog-ers. In “The Fog,” Don plagiarizes from Balzac in his words of wisdom to Dennis the prison warden. In “Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency,” this Balzac quotation is the theme of the episode.
The anticipation of the adults is often unconscious, and the majority of their fears muted. Sally Draper, a true child of the new generation, embodies their fears and warped expectations for the future. Their expectations are what drive this episode, as they spend more time reeling from their failure to be met than embracing the future to come. Take, for example, the fleeting reference to Vietnam at an office party: the future is only marginally in the thoughts of the untouchables at Sterling Cooper, who, as Smitty articulates, are unconcerned with the prospect of a draft. Guy is a lesson to everyone about the future and its inability of imagination to capture it.
The opening of the episode seemingly picks up from the closing of “The Fog,” in which we watched Betty walk down the hallway towards her crying son. Tonight, Don is roaming the halls, and he, like Betty, faces his future but not as hopefully as she does with baby Eugene. When Sally expresses her fear of the dark, Don diagnoses and creates her clinically: “I know you’re not Thomas Edison,” she says. “We’ll get you a nightlight,” Don responds. Sally needs a gesture of hope or a miracle, as symbolized by Edison the mythical inventor and American hero, but Don can’t even offer her a caring father substitute, just a nightlight. Sally is afraid of what happens “when you turn off the light,” the environment in which Don is most comfortable. We see this again later when Don is shown staring up and his unlit ceiling lamp before the screen cuts to Sally sleeping next to her nightlight. Don’s desire for freedom and possibility conflicts with Sally’s need for certainty, as seen in her desire to understand how her baby brother relates to her deceased Grandpa Gene, but as a result both lie in anticipation for two different reasons.
Neon Pink Wallpaper Isn't Bright Enough?
For Don, the promise of a dual position in London and New York, as predicted by Cooper, piques his interest, while the rest of the office anticipates the British invasion (not the Beatles or the red coats, mind you) on the second of July. The entire episode is spent looking forward, except for the beautiful scene between Joan and Don in the waiting room looking back on what might have been. Prophetically, Cooper calls his secretary and in the corner of the shot is his samurai army suit, ready for battle against the increasing encroachment of the London office. Equally portentous and foreboding is the humming of Cosgrove’s new John Deere, which rides into the Sterling Cooper office like an unintended Trojan horse. Everything about the episode forebodes doom, perhaps given the wry calmness of the British workers and the irony of a meeting so close to July 4th. Where Don is so willing to dismiss Sally initially at home, at work he gets caught up in the promise and portent of tomorrow.
Mini Me!
The London office is eagerly waiting as well, not because of their curiosity about Sterling Cooper but because of their own plans to further restructure the company. Guy’s demise, however, suggests that you can’t be sure of a sure thing and that to control the future and play God is to play with a lawnmower driven by a fat lady. St. John remarks of Oliver! “a tragedy with a happy ending, my favorite kind,” which is certainly one way to interpret this episode. To St. John, the tragedy is the demise of Sterling Cooper and the happy ending his success; to the audience, the tragedy is the emotional baggage along the way and the happy ending the fact that we all survive it. That’s the thing about expectations: once they’ve flown past us, there’s nothing left to do but mope or move on. The British have criticized Americans before for showing too many emotions, and it’s clear with their reactions to their respective setbacks that liberal emotions are not always so bad. Pryce’s silence when he receives the stuffed snake and accepts his assignment to India is deafening. The description of Guy, “inestimable charm,” Cambridge and London School of Economics, three years at McCann and Mercedes Benz, is just a resume, as he turns out to be expendable with the loss of his foot (“He was a great account man, a prodigy…now that’s all over.”) The British are proud but not compassionate, placing expectations before people in all things business. Joan is the one to leap to the rescue, and she’s on her way out (but more on her later).
At home, Betty is similarly invested in what the future holds, as embodied by her baby son. After shooing away her children from her bedside (Bobby asks ot pet him, ha), Betty contentedly watches Eugene sleep: “you sleep all you want, little pig in a blanket.” Reducing him to subhuman status, Betty labels her child as incapable of the evil or filth or mischief of her other children. A child that is so hopeful for Betty is a reminder of the dreadful past for Sally; Betty exists independent of history and deludes herself about the future, while Sally has been taught by Grandpa Gene to learn from history and prepare for the future.
Just as Betty forgets where she really comes from and Don is haunted by it, Joan’s surprise goodbye reminds us that the figures and statuesque titans of Sterling Cooper are connected to the humanity of the place. The Britains eventually dispense of Guy, but Joan can’t help but break down on her final day. Admittedly, she’s facing issues at home with Greg, but she and Peggy are aware of their past together and note how what started as hollow expectations in season one have filled out to so much more. “I should like to recognize [Sterling Cooper's] past,” Guy toasts, though he fails to recognize that its past is embodied by the leaders he booted off the psuedo podium. “I wish you caviar and children and all that is good in your new life,” he croons to Joan over her Bon Voyage cake, reminding her of the contradictory expectations of a home life and a great adventure. As we know, however, Joan is entitled to neither.
The scene in which Greg tells Joan he lost out on the residency is one of the most profoundly moving in Mad Men history. The sun has set on Joan’s celebratory dinner and Greg’s dream of becoming a surgeon, all of which forces Joan to adjust to failed expectations and a new void in her life without them. “I married you for your heart not your hands,” Joan reassures him in a comment that’s not all that reassuring. Greg has no status for Joan now, as he is just a dead weight and has lost his leverage over her that enabled him to make her play the accordion a few weeks ago. Greg has progressed to full on child, a degradation we learn with Joan’s squeaky high voice when she agrees to undress him. No longer tied down to him, Joan and Don are finally free to have an honest exchange about her performance and their co-workers. If Don is the mentor Peggy likes (sometimes) and Joan the mentor she begrudgingly accepts, their chemistry should be and is perfect.
Compare the dirty relaxation of the hospital to Betty and Don at dinner earlier in the episode. The scene between Betty and Don shows a more mature, functional family, where Betty is willing to wait on Don and Don is willing to include Betty in his world. For Betty, the cause is Gene, “he was perfect today;” for Don, it is the thought of London. I think he likes to entice Betty with the idea (look at her on, “what do you know) and to sell her on the pitch of the new life he is so desperate for. It’s a sweet and pensive and very adult moment for two mostly isolated people.
Roger’s father, we learn in the barber shop, thought little of the future until the day he died, an insight that is clearly the root of Roger’s self-indulgence. “[My father] had his fourth coronary behind the wheel. Hit a tree. The windshield severed his arm,” muses Roger. “It’s my company why should I be nervous?” Roger inherited his father’s devil may care policy, see throwing up oysters and gin in season one and marrying Jane in season two, except that Roger’s own car crash comes in this episode when he is left out of the axis of power by the Brits. What was permissible twenty years before nows carries with it the weight of knowledge and anticipation: Roger knew the health risks more thoroughly than his father, and he knew the repercussions of divorce, but he did it anyway. “I don’t like to be judged” is code for “I don’t like consequences.”
Babysitter Bert
In the aftermath, Roger turns to Cooper to understand the conflict of his realistic and unrealistic expectations. “I like to think I’m rich, they can’t reach hurt me. I’m being punished for making my job look easy,” Roger reasons. Roger reverts to the logic that got him in so much trouble with Don in “My Old Kentucky Home” and traces back to his mother of the previous generation, refusing to learn from this near disaster and living moment to moment. Cooper’s response, “It’s about letting things go so you can get what you want,” again exhibits two sides of the same coin: just as Don and Sally feel differently about the job, Sterling and Cooper are different in what they want. This is also reflected in their subtly distinct dessert preferences, as Roger ate a sundae last week and last night Cooper had pudding. Roger is saved by FootGate, and his reaction, “somewhere in this business, this has happened before,” both defends his self-absorption and allows him to mask his relief. It remains to be seen whether Roger will view this as a wake-up call or continue with high expectations for his future.
And then there’s this Conrad Hilton business. He offers Don a real opportunity to defy his expectations, saying, “The next time someone like me asks someone like you a question like that you need to think bigger.” The expectation of Conrad Hilton is shattered by the narrative format itself, in which his identity is a guessing game and in which his TIME magazine cover is juxtaposed against a cartoon mouse. Don can imagine the grandeur of Conrad Hilton and his luxurious hotels, but by the end of the episode he is most happy for is own son.
He, Sally, and Gene rock themselves to sleep on the promise of a new day and with the portents of Barbie and baby cries and dogs behind them. As Don put it, “We don’t know who he is yet or who he’s going to be, and that is a wonderful thing.”
