Mad Men S7 E4: The Monolith

Who could have predicted that Freddie Rumsen would figure so prominently into the redemption of Don Draper at this late date? Freddie’s destiny might have just been to be remembered as the drunk who pissed himself at work and humiliated himself out of a job. I like what Mad Men has been doing with him, establishing him as the guy who got his act together and is now helping Don climb out of the bottle and get his own act together by messengering his pitches to the agency and acting as Don’s unofficial sponsor. The show has always linked characters with multiple doppelgangers and cautionary examples so it was refreshing to see a positive spin on that.

Don finally appears back on track after flirting with the bottom yet again. He gets the idea to get the Lease Tech computer guys as clients but Bert reminds him that initiative is against the rules of his new state of employment. Rather than work under Peggy on the Burger Chef account, he plays solitaire in his office, sneaks vodka out of Roger’s office, gets wasted and tries to go to a Mets game. By the end, it was a relief to see Don heeding Freddie’s advice to “do the work” and actually brainstorming again.

If Mad Men is ending as the story of Don Draper’s redemption, I like it. It’s gotten tiresome to see him fall further and further into unseemly behavior and will be refreshing to see him pull his life together. When Don finds the deceased Lane’s discarded Mets pennant, you could see this as a bad omen. You could also see it as a symbol of hope, given that the season is set in 1969, the year of the Miracle Mets. Maybe Don will perform a miracle of his own?

I wasn’t sure what to make of the whole plot of Margaret (now Marigold) running off to live with the hippies. It did seem sitcom-obvious, like when the show telegraphed her and Roger falling in the mud from miles away. Maybe the point is that Margaret certainly does take after her father, who is living with his own high-class hippies at the hotel and doing his own brand of drugs. At least we got to see the always-fabulous Mona Sterling.

Was I the only one who was a little excited to see Joan and Peggy having a closed-door bitch session about the office? This was a nice callback to the end of season 4, when they shared a warmly catty moment after Don and Megan got engaged. As in that previous scene, Peggy is still tied to decisions other people made for her. She doesn’t want to work for Lou, she doesn’t want to work with Don and yet, she’s stuck. Lou and Jim are moving her around the chessboard as a pawn in their campaign against Don.

It isn’t all gloom and doom, however. Lou did start paying Peggy an extra $100 a week (1969 dollars) to work on Burger Chef. Good Lord, I would be thrilled for someone to pay me that kind of money, especially adjusted for inflation. That would change your life.

I will miss seeing the creative department working in the lounge. It was unsubtle that they dismantled the room to install the monolithic computer and Ginsberg was unsubtle (but very right) when he yelled that Sterling Cooper and Partners was removing something unique about the company. The irony here is that in a few years, despite what the IT guy said, that model computer will be obsolete and the agency will be stuck with a massive white elephant. Change is coming and everyone has to adapt to survive but they may all lose something precious in the process.

Just pay up

It amazes me the lengths people will go to not to have to pay for things. Sure, we all want things for free and we’ll try wacky schemes to avoid opening a checkbook. In Nevada, Cliven Bundy has gone to quite an extreme, using the help of an armed militia to protest having to pay fees for his cattle to graze on federal land. This battle has been going on in court for 20 years and Bundy has lost every battle and has not been able to prove his claim that he has special grazing rights. He has called for county sheriffs to “disarm the federal bureaucrats.”

Dude, just pay the fees, for Christ’s sake. I’ve never seen so many histrionics over one person who is trying to get out of opening his wallet.

To the other ranchers in Nevada who pay their fees to the Bureau of Land Management, it must seem kind of insulting that this one guy feels he can get out of it. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing," Bundy said. The existence of a federal government is not a belief; it is factual. Bundy just sounds like one of those drama queens who accepts the parts of the federal government that benefit him, like the Second Amendment, but cries “tyranny!” when the same government actually tries to collect taxes. Drop the highfalutin language and just admit that you’re cheap.

It gets even wackier from there as Bundy checked in from the planet Jupiter with his philosophies on race relations. “Let me tell you about the Negro,” he said. Please, sir! Do enlighten us! With a set-up like that, you just know what follows will be horrifying/hilarious racist gold! Bundy asked whether black people might be better off as slaves. To answer this rhetorical (at least I hope it was rhetorical) question, no. Nobody is better off as a slave because slavery is the bottom of the human condition. Bundy’s question proves what I’ve always believed: There is such a thing as a stupid question.

This same guy who questions whether slavery might not be so terrible has also compared himself to Rosa Parks. Even a casual study of history can spot the difference between the two. Parks stood up to a system that stripped her and a lot of other people of their dignity. Bundy is standing up for his right not to pay the taxes that numerous governmental bodies have said he owes.

What I want to know is: Who are these armed militia people who felt so passionately about this issue that they turned out en masse to protest? Did they hear about this federal stand-off and say, “Hey, some guy won’t pay his taxes! Grab all the guns you can carry! Let’s intimidate the hell out of some bureaucrats at the Bureau of Land Management!” I support the right to protest, of course, but this is what they’re getting passionate about? One person who doesn’t want to pay?

There are legitimate fears of the overreach of the federal government. You know what scares me more? Groups with names like the Oath Keepers, the White Mountain Militia and the Praetorian Guard, which were standing with Bundy. It scares me that we could have another Waco standoff. It scares me that our great savior of federal tyranny is some posse that says the Constitution means whatever they say it means and sticks a gun in the face of anyone who tries to argue otherwise. At least the federal government has an extensive appeal system, which Bundy worked for 20 years. What kind of recourse do you have when you disagree with an armed militia? 

Mad Men S7 E3: Field Trip

At the last minute of Mad Men, I was sure Don would tell his fellow partners to jump in a lake. After all, he had an offer from a rival ad agency and the demands for him to stay at Sterling Cooper and Partners were strict: working for the guy who replaced him, never being alone with clients and as Joan spat out, the killing blow: “Except for client events, there is to be no alcohol in the office.”

Why would Don stay somewhere he’s clearly barely tolerated when he has a path out? Maybe his whole awkward day of hanging around the office broke him down. Unfamiliar faces greeted him and so few seemed happy to see him again. He got a chilly greeting from Joan and Peggy told him they don’t miss him (but would she really rather work for Lou with idiot secretary Meredith?). He had to sit all day in the creative office, eating and sandwich and flipping through magazines, while the partners figured out how to deal with a prodigal son that they never wanted to see again. When he handed Dawn his coat and hat, the only place she could put it was in her own office because he has nowhere to go. If he’s to stay, Don will be ensconced in the office of a man who hanged himself. Roger argued that Don is a creative genius but as Joan said, “This is working” without him.

It was telling that when the very busy Dawn said she couldn’t personally deliver his typing ribbon and paper (Honestly, Don, I know you’re an executive but can’t you just buy it yourself? You have nothing better to do), he petulantly told her of course he didn’t make plans because he assumed she was coming over. Don had come to depend on her company, one of the few things to make him clean up and put on a suit. He’d also come to depend on Dawn being the only one at the agency he could order around and with her new position, she just doesn’t have time for him.

Maybe Don is accepting the new rules at Sterling Cooper because it’s a little stability, perhaps something to keep him sober, as the rest of his world falls apart. A surprise visit to Megan in California quickly turns sour as, already annoyed at Don for inserting himself into her career troubles, she figures out he’s been fired and lying to her about it for months. Like his brutal honesty at the Hershey’s meeting, Don tries to tell the truth but has yet to master telling it at the right time.

There’s a parallel here between Don’s attempts at sobriety and his attempts at being honest. In both cases, he is learning as he goes and making mistakes along the way. As people sometimes find alcoholics are no fun when they get sober, do people like Don’s lies and stories better than his truth? Both times he’s come clean to people, it’s caused him to lose something dear. What most people would take from that is that maybe they shouldn’t have lied in the first place but with someone as used to deception as Don, in life and in the inherent BS of advertising, maybe the lesson he’ll take is that he should just keep on lying so people will accept him. Better to keep Dick Whitman buried.

On the titular, literal field trip, Betty is feeling as rejected as her ex-husband. It’s both sad and hilarious to see her make an effort to chaperone Bobby’s field trip and have it blow up in her face. Dressed in her best political wife suit and big sunglasses, making catty comments about her son’s teacher, she is out of place on the farm but is still trying. And what does she get for it? Her son trades away her sandwich, leaving her hungry and sulky for the rest of the day.

It’s laughable to see Betty that angry, even hours later, over a sandwich and refusing to eat dinner. She took what could have been a wonderful day with her son and wouldn’t let go of the one little thing that marred it. But it’s also very sad because this is a woman who is still dealing with some deep issues of loneliness and depression. Her marriage to Henry helped for a while but she seems to be backsliding into what Glenn once called “profoundly sad.” In Betty’s mind, a traded away sandwich equals the inevitable estrangement of her children. It’s only a matter of time before the youngest turns from her, she says. Betty and Don are unmoored and believe they are losing everything.

All About the Women

People have said that there are no good acting roles for women. It’s not for me to dispute that but I’m wondering if that applies to movies more than TV because some of the TV shows we watch are all about the women. They offer great, meaty parts to actresses.

In particular, The Americans has an embarrassment of riches for actresses. The starring role, Elizabeth Jennings, is a cold-blooded, ruthless Soviet spy who nonetheless is showing just a few cracks in her ironclad communist ideology as she tries to resist the seductive American lifestyle. She’s the most dangerous woman in Washington and she’s starting to go just a little unstable, feeling love for her fake spy husband for the first time and wondering how to protect her kids. Keri Russell plays her magnificently. My favorite scene this season so far has been Elizabeth casually holding a crowbar and subtly threatening the life of a warehouse worker who discovered her theft of plans for a submarine propeller.

The other women of The Americans have very meaty parts to play. Nina is fascinating. As a Soviet triple agent, trying to turn an FBI agent who thinks he’s turning her, she walks on the highest tightrope of anyone in the series. She holds a lot of power and but is also in grave danger. It’s a tricky part, having to deceive so many people and she plays it with a combination of opacity and wide-openness.

It would be easy to pity “poor Martha” for being blissfully unaware that she’s married to a Soviet spy but she really is just a few discoveries away from bringing down the entire KGB operation. I am terrified of how she will react when she discovers her husband has been using her for information. I foresee either a horrific emotional meltdown or a shooting spree.

Elsewhere on TV, Parks and Recreation has long been a staple of great female roles. Leslie Knope is, I think, one of the iconic TV creations. She is hyper-competent to the point of being domineering. That Amy Poehler has yet to win an Emmy for this role is a crime against TV. Her employee April has shown real growth over the course of the series, evolving into someone who cares about her job more than she might care to admit, but still with an anarchic sense of humor.

Donna Meagle is basically James Bond. She can bed whatever man she wants, dresses to kill at all times, can down shots from two shot glasses at once and hangs out in a cigar bar. I love how they have been teasing out information about her unseen adventures, like the condo in Seattle, the regular trips to Kuala Lumpur, and the two annulments, one of which was part of a long con against Keith Sweat. Donna can git it.

I won’t belabor Mad Men anymore but that show has a deep bench of women. Peggy Olson, Joan Harris, Betty Francis, Megan Draper, Sally Draper and Trudy Campbell are just a few of the meaty roles.

I watch too much TV.

Mad Men S7 E2: A Day's Work

When I heard secretaries Dawn and Shirley each call the other by their own name, I was confused at first. I can be slow on the uptake with plot sometimes but I am pretty sure I can keep straight the names of two separate characters. Then it dawned on me: The two women are making fun of how the less-enlightened staff of Sterling Cooper and Partners can’t tell apart the firm’s only two black employees.

Mad Men has often faced criticism for eliding race relations and the civil rights battles of the ‘60s. Most black characters have been maids, elevator operators, the odd burglar, etc. The relative invisibility of people of color made a certain amount of sense because the show is the story of an advertising firm that would have been insular and not feature many, if any, minority employees.

Last night the show was more upfront with addressing race. Dawn’s new boss Lou Avery rakes her over the coals for something that isn’t her fault (and they’re really setting up Lou as an asshole as he’s dumping on the sweetest character of the series) so they have to demote Dawn to the front desk. Then there’s an ugly scene in which ol’ Bert Cooper “suggests” that they might not want to have a black employee visible in the lobby (what would people think?!). It’s a nasty reminder of some of the attitudes of the old guard 45 years ago. In the end, Dawn wins out, getting a promotion to Joan’s position of office manager, with her own office. I was happy to see Dawn get a break and finally stand up for herself, especially after working so hard under the table to keep the exiled Don in the loop. It was nice to see her flash a smile as she sat at her new desk.

After a wacky mix-up with Valentine’s Day roses, Peggy demotes her secretary Shirley, who appears to end up working for Lou. The thing with the flowers was sitcom funny but also made Peggy come off, uncharacteristically, like a real asshole. She complained that she didn’t get anything done all day, but it was her own fault, spending the day livid at Ted. She can’t lie on a couch drinking and stewing and then blame other people for her lack of productivity. Peggy has become the establishment she once broke into.

Joan finally gets her own office upstairs with the big boys. This is long overdue since even as a partner, she had been treated like a secretary in the role she had long ago outgrown. Joan is in a precarious position on the show. She is still haunted somewhat by the fact that she had to sleep with the sleazy Jaguar guy to become partner. Even though she has proven she is uber-competent over 15 years, there still seems to be an asterisk next to her partnership. It was telling that Jim Cutler, who probably doesn’t know about Joan’s date with the Jaguar guy, was the one who gave her the office. It wasn’t clear whose office she took. Pete’s? Ted’s? Bob’s? If any person deserves to come out of Mad Men as a winner, it’s Joan Harris.

On the loser side, there’s Don Draper, sleeping til noon, drinking again, eating crackers in front of the TV and putting on a suit only at the end of the day to keep up appearances when Dawn shows up. In the viciously accurate words of Jim Cutler, Don is “the ex-wife we’re paying alimony.”

There is a little redemption for Don, though, in the way he finally is honest with Sally after she catches him lying about still working at Sterling Cooper. She has seen her father at his ugliest and Don drops the mask just a little with her and tries to repair his breach of trust. God love Kiernan Shipika, who has become one of the more fascinating actresses and characters on this show, exhibiting traits of both her parents almost without realizing it. I loved the subtle disgust in her voice when she throws Don’s lie about “not feeling well” back in his face. Their exchange in the car was a gut punch, with Sally getting across how hard it would have been if she’d gone to Don’s apartment and had to share an elevator with the woman she caught her father sleeping with (red handed). Don has no defense for this sort of thing. The ad man has found some bullshit that he can’t sell to the client.    

But yes, there is some redemption for him. Sally’s parting “I love you” was devastating. Even after everything, maybe these two will finally come to an understanding. Maybe that small gesture is the beginning of Don getting his life back together.

Twerk It, Mylie

The words on the windshield of the car sideswiped me as I rounded the corner yesterday on my way home from work: “Twerk It, Mylie” in bold white letters on the front of the black sports car.

Who are these people? What exactly does this bold statement mean? The car was gone in an instant but the sight of this raised so many questions and emotions in me. On this Good Friday, I’d like to ponder exactly what all of means.

Of course, I’m familiar with Mylie Cyrus’ twerking act. (It’s so heartening to know the Microsoft Office diligently update their dictionary. I’ve already typed “twerk” and “twerking” and spell check has yet to underline either in red.) I’m generally out of it as far as pop music so I think I only heard “We Can’t Stop” once at a bar and I was very bored and underwhelmed. I never actually heard or saw the full version of her twerking with Robin Thicke at the MTV Awards. I’ve only seen clips on mute on the TV at the gym. I’m not opposed to certain antics on stage but from what I saw, the problem was not the twerking. The problem was that she wasn’t twerking very well. For a dance that was a prominent part of her act, I was surprised that so little effort seemed to have gone into the choreography. Mylie was just kind of flopping around.

So I’m wondering what the huge “Twerk, It Mylie,” big enough to obscure the bottom half of the driver’s view, could mean. From the quick glance I saw a man and woman in their 20s in the car. Are they just fans of Mylie and her ass-dancing or is there more to it? Some companies will pay you to drive around with their logos all over the car (which is a great way to make extra cash) so maybe this was some kind of ad for Mylie’s tour or something. You know, just to raise awareness of someone who really needs a higher profile.

Maybe the logo was some kind of empowerment, like “You Go, Girl,” except a lot more specific about how to go and who the girl is. “Twerk” may just be some kind of general affirmation or something. Maybe they chant this as a mantra in some new religion.

It’s probably just a fan. I wonder how permanent this lettering is on the car. I’m assuming it comes off easily. I would hope so. This will look very dated soon. A few years ago, the sentence “Twerk It, Mylie” would have made no sense to anyone. A few years from now, this sentence also may not mean anything to people. Us old timers would have to fill people in on the legend of Mylie Cyrus and the pink teddy bears grinding up on the Foot Locker employee. Few things are permanent in pop music, no matter how much buzz they generate today. Remember the Jonas Brothers? Me neither. This is why I don’t alter my car with anything with a shelf life: You never want to be the guy driving around with the Kerry/Edwards ’04 bumper sticker.

Thought provoking, right? I’ll be pondering this for the rest of the day.

Mad Men S7 E1: Time Zones

I’m bored and can’t think of anything to write about so I’m going to start recapping episodes of the last season of Mad Men. If you watch the show, I hope you get something out of this and if you don’t watch it, I’m not sure what to tell you.

I was slow to get started with Mad Men. We watched a few episodes as they aired during the first season but then stopped. I thought the show was good in the early days but as I started working my way through it again, I really started loving it and the analysis online has made me appreciate the show even more. My favorite so far as been season 5 but I also loved seasons 4 and 6.

These reviews will hopefully elaborate on what I love about the show. Here is a brief summation of why I love Mad Men:

1. Themes

2. Levels

Think about it. 

Anyway, we pick up our story in January 1969. This is the shortest gap yet between seasons of this show. While a few of the characters found renewal over the two-month gap, most seem to be in a holding pattern.

The most striking story this week was Peggy’s. The last time we saw her, she appeared to be ascending to take Don’s place as the major creative engine of Sterling Cooper and Partners, but her personal life was a mess following Ted’s callous breakup with her. With Don gone, she is having an even harder time at work trying to please her new boss, who pointedly notes that he is not as susceptible to her charms as Don was. Ted is ostensibly off to the California branch of the agency but Peggy still has to make awkward chit-chat with her former lover as he visits the New York office. And she’s overwhelmed by her position, which another ex pushed her into, of being a landlord of a pre-gentrification Upper West Side building. 

All this leaves Peggy crumbled on the floor in sobs. It was an effective scene, with the preceding hour of stress building and building until of course she breaks down. Who wouldn’t? I really hope she finds her footing this season. Last year she advanced further in her career but was still hamstrung by decisions other people made for her and I hope she attains some measure of power and control. The series is as much her story as Don’s.

Speaking of whom, Don’s life may seem glamorous, as we see in the swanky slow-motion introduction as Megan meets him at the airport driving a convertible and wearing a negligee-like dress, but underneath, it’s all crap. On a visit to California, he lies to his wife about taking a forced leave from Sterling Cooper and is reduced using Freddie Rumsen as a mouthpiece for his ideas at his old company. (Megan is lying in her own way, dressing in late ‘60s bohemian drag and hiding her wealth from her struggling actor friends.) Sex between the two seems tentative and passionless. Don ends up back in their New York apartment with a balcony door that won’t close, sitting on the freezing terrace like a sad sack. The messy personal life is nothing new but now he doesn’t even have a job to go to. This is Don when he lets himself unravel because there’s no reason to get out of bed.

Joan is another one in a holding pattern. She seized power to become a partner and aggressively landed the Avon account last season. But now she seems to be hitting the same ceilings again as new accounts are hesitant to work with her. She has proven her worth to the company for years but in some ways, she’s still being treated like a secretary. I am very much rooting for Joan, the most competent character on this show, to triumph.

Pete and Roger are those who have actually found some momentum in completely different ways. The move to Los Angeles was apparently just what Pete needed and that was the first I’ve seen him happy in … probably ever. My God, he even offers Don a hug. This old-money East Coaster is the last person I thought would be comfortable with a relaxed California lifestyle. Roger also seems to have quite a relaxed lifestyle of his own and we first see him, naked but for a phone on his lap, waking up in the aftermath of an orgy in his tony bedroom. When he goes to sleep, he finds a woman and man in his bed and the woman tells him, “You know everyone is welcome in this bed.” Far from liberating to me, this seemed more like a harbinger of a loss of control for Roger Sterling.

So most of the characters enter the Nixon administration at low ebbs. Will season seven be the story of redemption or will they just slide further down?