‘It looks like a sad person lived here’ – Melanie
Welcome to this week’s Notes from the Break Room. Mr Dean has stepped out for the afternoon (something about “a godless retreat in the Bahamas”); he’ll be back in time for next week’s recap duties. Which leaves me wondering if the mystery woman with keys to Don’s apartment means that last week’s fling with Diana is over. We don’t find out – but we do learn that Melanie’s wake-up call is strictly business: she’s here to sell the penthouse. That is, once she figures out what to do with all the patio furniture Don has moved inside the living room.
As we know, it’s a great property, but there’s just one problem – apparently there’s not much of a market for the empty shell/empty look: it “reeks of failure”. Of course, to Don the lack of furnishings is the perfect opportunity to market the place as a blank slate. If he didn’t have so many memories wrapped up in these walls, you can imagine him being the ideal customer. “A lot of wonderful things happened here,” he insists, a bit on the defensive as Melanie tries to convince him the odd chair might help. It’s hard to know who he’s trying to convince – her or himself?
It’s another episode in which Don gets to see himself through other people’s eyes: first Melanie; then Roger, who casually delegates the job of coming up with a quick Gettysburg address-style mission statement for the future of the company – that’s the sort of thing he thinks Don can whip up before lunch, surely. Ted agrees when Don tries to rope him into the future business: “You’re so much better at painting a picture.”
Or there’s the doomed Mathis, who laps up Don’s advice and then spits it back, after failing to pull off a Draper-style move with some clients, and getting it very, very wrong (“You don’t have any character – you’re just … handsome. Stop kidding yourself!”). From the outside, he’s still leading that glamorous executive penthouse life: Sally’s friend Sarah laps up the corny dad jokes (“When I watch television the commercials are my favourite part”), which Sally can’t stand: just like Betty with Glen, Don is a profound embarrassment to her (they both “ooze everywhere”).
Even for Don, a vision of the future is a hard thing to conjure up in a morning. “Four score and seven years ago … Let’s assume that it’s good, and it’s going to get better … ” is the best he can do as he lies back on his office sofa thinking of tomorrow, waiting for that Carousel magic to hit him, and finding … nothing. Or at least, just more questions.
Roger’s request isn’t that big – just some “reasonable hopes and dreams – doesn’t have to be science fiction”, but even that seems to be beyond Don this week. For him, it’s hard not to take it seriously, to let it play on his mind, so that it becomes a much bigger question, one that speaks to the core of Mad Men, especially as we count down to the final weeks.
It’s bigger than Ted’s desire to land some “bigger accounts”, or Peggy’s ambition to be the first woman creative director at this agency, to land something huge, have “a big idea”, come up with a catchphrase or “create something of lasting value” – and it’s certainly bigger than the “peanut butter cookie problem” that Pete brings to Don’s attention.
Two and a half thousand words on the future of the company might not sound like a lot, but in Don’s current state of mind – which, let’s face it, is pretty much the state of mind he’s been trying to fend off since we met him – it’s enough to make him ask a tough question: what’s next? Or should he listen to Peggy – it’s a job – not the meaning of life?
‘You look exactly the same’ – Glen Bishop
Back in the suburbs, the future seems much more certain for one of Mad Men’s more oddball side characters. Glen Bishop pops back to say goodbye to Sally – and Betty. Now 18, tall, a groovy dude with sideburns and a random girl on his arm, he’s signed up for Vietnam, and will be shipping out next week. Sally’s response is heartfelt/priceless: “Are you fucking stupid?” Betty keeps calmer, even when Glen returns to try to woo her in her kitchen with tales of his patriotism and bravery. Betty sees through the teenage bravado, backs him down as he stares into her eyes and tries to kiss her (“I’m married”) and gets the truth out of him; he’s only signed up because he was flunking college – his stepdad was going to kill him.
Betty holds her warm, proud smile (“You’re going to make it, I’m positive”) until Glen leaves; her body drops, just a touch. She probably won’t see him again. It’s an interesting resolution to one of the show’s more unusual relationships – Betty barely containing her happiness at seeing him again, letting him know that she too is thinking of studying, almost treating him like an equal, rather than one of Sally’s peers; and then remembering that she’s the adult, but still being kind about his feelings.
Later, Bobby and Gene run through the kitchen playing with a toy machine gun. Betty dumps the gun into the kitchen bin. It’s not the most subtle shot that we’ve seen in Mad Men but it’s still a moving detail and a great use of the sense of time that long-form TV drama allows: it wasn’t so long ago that we were watching Glen at their age; it could be them in a few years’ time.
Culture watch
Roberta Flack’s version of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face plays us out tonight. Some appropriately existential thoughts in the first verse:
The first time, ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars
Were the gifts you gave
To the dark, and the endless skies
One of Don’s ideas that Melanie could use to attract some buyers for his apartment is to suggest that it belongs to someone who made a million dollars creating the Frisbee; the actual creator, Walter Fredrick Morrison did make lot from it.
Bobby wants to stay up to catch The Brady Bunch – one of the first mainstream TV shows to feature a “blended” family of two divorced parents.
Joan leaves the house while Kevin watches Sesame Street; 1970 was the first year the show was broadcast by PBS.
“Don’t listen to Jane Fonda here” – Fonda was as famous in the 1970s for her anti-Vietnam war stance (“Hanoi Jane” etc as she was for films such as Klute.
Did Glen make it to Playland? It’s a longstanding amusement park in New York – which featured in the scene in Big in which Tom Hanks meets the fortune teller Zoltar the Magnificent on the boardwalk.
If you’re looking to see some more of the Mad Men cast, there are two enjoyable cameos in the first season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Notes
Love the fact that the writers haven’t forgotten about Scout’s Honor – Lou Avery’s comic strip about a cheeky army monkey, and that Avery is using his Los Angeles contacts to get a meeting with Hanna Barbera, home of The Flintstones and The Jetsons, who ramped up their 1970s output with Hong Kong Phooey and a Harlem Globetrotters cartoon. Somehow it doesn’t feel as though Scout’s Honor will be joining them.
“Can’t believe you two have the balls to walk back into this place after you embarrassed yourself.” Stick to the bar of soap, Mathis.
Fancy trying the Joan breakfast? A glass of skimmed milk, a grapefruit, pot of coffee and some French toast.
“This conversation’s a little late and so am I.” Sally has really upped her game when it comes to winding up Betty. She’s just as quick with Don: “What do you want to do?” he asks about her future. “I just want to eat dinner” she fires back. “You’re a very beautiful girl, except you can be more than that,” he tells her later, one of his heavier attempts at imparting some life lessons.
“You can’t go to the pyramids, you can’t go anywhere.” Joan’s new love-interest Richard is played by Bruce Greenwood, who you may remember as Mitch Yost in John from Cincinnati and Captain Christopher Pike in the latest Star Trek films.
“One tink and you’re hooked.” The Tinkerbell Cookies campaign could do with a bit of work.
“Why don’t you write down all your of your dreams so I can shit on them?” There’s not a lot of Peggy this week, but this line was perfect.
Extra reading
This New Yorker cartoon is almost a like a Mad version of Mad Men (Mad’s Mad Men?).
If you’re still wondering about the girl in the chinchilla coat from the casting sessions last week, Vogue spotted that she’s Rainey Qualley, also Miss Golden Globe 2012 and one of Andie MacDowell’s daughters (her other daughter, Margaret Qualley, played Justin Theroux’s daughter in The Leftovers).
Some notes on the show’s notorious attention to detail.
“It’s bittersweet … It’s more about letting go of a character I’ve played for half my life.” Kiernan Shipka on saying goodbye to Sally Draper.
