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[Alex Blagg, formerly of Best Week Ever blog and Blagg Blogg Dot Com, and currently the editor of Wonderwall, will be bringing his wit, wisdom, and love of skinny ties to this season of Mad Men.]
At Sterling Cooper, there is no day of rest to honor the plight of the laboring man. So holiday weekend or not, it is time once again to cast our mystic Mad Men crystals, examine all the meaningful symbolism, and attempt to decipher the infinite truth of the White American Experience that manifests so fleetingly, like a DVR’d chimera made out of cigarette smoke. Here are some things we learned this time:
Jai Alai was the Laserdisc of sports. This week’s Sterling Cooper creative pitch meeting was brought to us by some crazy rich kid who calls himself Ho Ho and wants to spend a million dollars to convince American that the obscure sport known as Jai Alai would somehow make a better national pastime than baseball. Even before Don finally decides to show up to the meeting, the kid is clearly in way over his head. His spoiled sense of privilege, deluded self-confidence and ridiculous willingness to sink millions of ad dollars into a sport that’s played with giant wicker fruit basket gloves make him an easy mark for the greedy mad men. Pete repeatedly insists on referring to him only in culinary terms, with his increasingly eager talk of devouring this delicious deal on a platter. However, it becomes clear that Don prefers his business deal meals to be of the more organic, free-range, grass-fed variety, so he decides to ask the rich kid’s father for permission to fuck him over. That’s Don Draper, always asking nicely to finger-bang you. Anyway, the old man says they can take the kid’s money, so Pete gets his meal after all (one has to assume some celebratory dancing was involved, though it must have been cut for length. Oh well, perhaps in the deleted scenes.)
New York renters were a danger to themselves even before Craigslist. Peggy hates commuting and wants to move to Manhattan, but Peggy’s mom disapproves, saying she’ll get raped if she moves to Manhattan (I’m pretty sure this is factually incorrect as the Meatpacking District was still packing meat back in 1963, which means that most nice young Bridge and Tunnel girls were still relatively safe from the kind of sexual persecution that held sway there once Carrie Bradshaw and the gals started guzzling pinktinis at places called “Den” or whatever around the time 9/11 happened. Get your historical facts straight, Mad Men). Anyway, as long as Peggy doesn’t seek out apartment-hunting help from Joan, the one person in Manhattan who we know for a fact lives with a rapist, she should be fine. Whoops, she had Joan help re-write her apartment-hunting ad! Joan actually made Peggy sound snappier, so there probably won’t be anymore terrible prank calls coming from inside the office (seriously, that prank call made Bart Simpson sound like Chaucer. So terrible), but Pegs probably would have just been better off having Big Donny D do the punch-up for her as one of his weirdly hypnotic haikus, like, “Peggy Olsen. The roommate you need. Here. Now. Forever.” Anyway, it turns out she’s probably going to live with that girl who has the bizarre and unexplained mistrust of sailors. Now that I think about it, Peggy’s mom was probably right.
Sal’s wife seems to really hate musical theater. After being ignored by her husband for what one has to assume was the entirety of their marriage, Sal’s poor wife Kitty finally figured out why the only negligee that would arouse Sal’s interest would be one that’s “strapping young bellboy”-colored. While it’s true that the last forty-five years has yielded considerable advancements in the field of Gaydar, one would imagine that it would have taken less than Sal doing one of the most flamboyantly flaming renditions of a musical number ever performed this side of a Tranny talent show to even register a blip on Kitty’s screen. And the wilted expression that poured over her face at the moment of realization just made the whole thing even more heartbreaking.
Salted Ice Cream is probably not the best idea. I guess this is what we in the biz call “foreshadowing”. Like a handgun introduced in the first reel of a suspense film, the guy who’s dumping table salt on spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream straight from the tub may not make it to the end of the episode. That being said, RIP Grampa Gene. Just when we were starting to enjoy the terrible babysitting antics of this grizzled Grampa Simpson, they had to go and take him away from us. But such is life. One minute you’re scaring small children with blood-stained battle helmets and letting your eight-year old grand-daughter drive a car, and the next you’re gone. Anyway, after a local police officer tells Betty and Sally that the old man kicked while waiting in line at the A&P, Betty (who manages to outdo her own “cold loveless mother” act week after week) straight up shuts the front door, leaving her young daughter to cry on the front steps alone. Later, Sally yells at her grieving/maniacally laughing parents in the kitchen and then watches a monk set himself on fire. Man, that poor girl is seriously going to spend the seventies making more regrettable sexual decisions than Warren Beatty.
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I was 100% sure that Gene was going to at some point do the following things
1. molest Sally
2. teach Bobby something inhernetly dangerous and/or racist
3. break something valuable
4. fuck up a deal for Don/Sterling Cooper
5. die a slow painful death
I’m kind of glad they killed him off though because he was uncomfortable to watch.
It’s because he looks like John McCain.
I think it says a lot that basically every blog I read that discusses this show was on board with the “Gramps is going to touch Sally” idea. Can’t an old man just be a buddy to his emotionally needy granddaughter without being a secret kid toucher?
No.
Not on television
I like how they’re finally turning it around and making Don seem like a flawed-but-decent person and Betty is the big asshole in that duo. As it should be, she’s never not been terrible.
I think the show is telling us they’re both pretty terrible in different, probably incompatible ways. I don’t get why Don gets to be forgiven for his many faults because he’s a product of his time, but Betty is always just a bitch. They’re both products of their time! And on top of that, he’s a lying liar who lies and fingerbangs women to demonstrate power over them, and she’s a bitch. And a horrible, horrible, horrible mother.
Eternal upvotes. I also really like January Jones so far- she works for sharks. http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/ecollywood/stories/mad-men-star-january-jones-is-scared-for-sharks
Maybe little Bobby shot Grandpa Gene in the head at the A&P so he too could become a man.
Bobby Draper = Michael Lee
I seriously fear for Peggy. After her “Don’t be scared for me. I will be fine.” speech last week and her probably Crazy Town, U.S.A. future roommate (as well as Joan arguably out-copywriting her on her roommate ad)… they are maybe setting her up for bad times ahead, and it makes me awfully nervous.
Dear Mad Men writers: I beg of you, don’t give us “I’m Peggy Olson, and I want to smoke some marijuana” and then tear her apart. (Unless you are going to have her bounce back bigger, badder, and more Peggy-rific.)
Also just want to say that Peggy’s “I told you so, motherfuckers” smirk after the Patio ad flopped was gold.
Towards the end of the episode when they watched the commercial created for Patio and everyone pretty much said there was something off about it, I kinda got the impression that they were inadvertently alluding to the fact that it was directed by a gay man, thus lacking the sexual appeal of the original that they all seemed to get a boner from. Instead it focused more on the performance aspect which as Alex described Sal so fabulously performed to his wife’s horror as she realized why she hadn’t been “tended to” in such a long time.
Are you sure Don was asking permission to fuck that kid over? I thought he was meeting with the father to ask if he really wanted that deal to go through, as he thought it was a terrible idea? And at dinner, Don tried to convince him to give up the idea all together. So rather than Don finger banging the guy, I think he was trying to gently massage his testicles, or something more pleasurable than a violent draper fingerbang…
Grandpa Gene does not care that peaches give Bobby a rash!
The series planted the seed last season when Gene mistook Betty for his dead wife and started getting fresh with her. Back then his declining mental state was more uncertain and it made me wonder if he had a history with Betty. ugh. Worst first videogum comment.
joan’s sample roommate ad read like a sorority sister’s facebook page.
BYE BYE SUGAR/BIRDIE is what they play in hell. True say.
The whole Sally-is-starting-to-hate-her-parents-and-sees-monks-on-fire-and-starts-to-act-out thing is straight outta American Pastoral.
SPOILER: In season 8, she commits an act of domestic terrorism.
For reals, man. When I saw her watching that monk on fire, I actually screamed at the TV, “Sally is Merry Levov!” Betty makes a pretty good Dawn Dwyer Levov, too.
I’m also pretty sure if you tried to make a Venn diagram of Mad Men watchers and Philip Roth readers, about 90% of it would be overlap.
I recently read American Pastoral and picked up that Sally is Merry just like you did after the scene where she sees the monk perform the self-immolation. Can’t help but think that Weiner did it purposely.
I recently read American Pastoral and picked up that Sally is Merry just like you did after the scene where she sees the monk perform the self-immolation. Can’t help but think that Weiner did it purposely.
Best episode ever!!!! Peggy and Sals storylines are both great. I think I like it when Pete isn’t the focus of the story. He’s really terrible, but this jai lai guy might be a contender for most annoying entitled rich yuppie
Did anybody else notice:
1. How suddenly Sal became the Queen to Rule Them All?
2. That when Don put Sal in charge of the commercial, and then the entire commercial division (or whatever it was that he put Sal in charge of at the end), that Sal seemed to get some kind of funny feeling inside? Uh-oh.
3. That aside from Gene’s death and the Sal business mentioned above, that, sorry, but this episode was kind of boring?
Also, I predict that Sally is going to light everything on fire. Next week.
Pouring out some liquor for the big homie Grandpa Gene. You were gone too soon. Rest in Peace. Sally’s gonna be so fucked up.
And he said the chocolate ice cream smelled like oranges before he died… ORANGES MEAN DEATH! The Godfather taught us that… Shit just got very real.
Did Don piss anyone off getting indignant about a dead man’s hat? He obviously thinks it’s ok to have a dead man’s name!
Awesome lines: “I’m terrified of him. Catching balls in the face.” (that’s what she said) from the Jai Alai guy, Hoho.
“Victory medal. France. I should have another one for beating the clap!” I’m going to miss Grandpa Gene. He was just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
I noticed the oranges thing too, pretty cool. And those are great lines. The humor is so off-putting the way it catches you off guard. It’s like literary reference, symbolism, ‘Balls in the face!”
Grandpa Gene’s timing with opening the fan and “There was this girl…” was one of my favorites.
That and “Pachi caught a bug, lost eight pounds. That’s a lot on his frame.”
I loved seasons one and two, I really did. But something just seems off. Where’s the intrigue? Where’s the conflict (as in real actual conflict I might care about)? Why was there a moment dedicated to Betty biting a peach? There’s a lot of bad acting shrouded in snappy suits and knit dresses… I want to love it! But it’s getting harder…
I guessing a big part of this season will have to do with the stresses of Sally’s forthcoming behavioral problems.
And Sal can’t keep gaying it up with that becoming a big issue. Like how they mentioned a few times that Fred Rumson had a drinking problem, and then all of a sudden he peed. Maybe Sal will do whatever gays do instead of peeing.
did anyone notice that bobby is a different actor?
Did anyone else notice that DON BROKE THE ANT FARM!?! (Am I the only person who cares except for the annoying british secretary?)