Ah yes, Mad Men (Sky Atlantic), where were we again? Don’s second marriage is over, the agency was bought and is now a subsidiary of a bigger agency, man went to the moon, and Bert died. In short.
Now we’re at 1970, and a beautiful woman is taking off a mink coat – actually chinchilla, worth $15,000 – for Don’s pleasure. Not just for Don, it turns out; she’s not another conquest, yet. This is “work”, a “casting” – some of the other men from the agency are there, tongues hanging out, panting. Sexism is very much alive and well in the new decade; there’s a scene later, where Joan and Peggy are meeting some men to try to get a pantyhose product (the ones Don is falling past in the opening credits perhaps?) into department stores, when it’s turned up to 11. I wanted them – Joan and Peggy – to fight back, at least bond, in sisterhood; but they end up fighting each other, arguing about it in the lift on the way out. Joan goes to buy clothes, Peggy later gets drunk; throw money or booze at the problem, that’s what to do.
Back to the so-called casting though, and the music playing is the Peggy Lee song Is That All There Is? It’s hardly incidental music. Everything in Mad Men – the background, every period piece, every fabric, Nixon on the telly, a faraway war against communism, Ken’s father-in-law getting rich from hideous chemical weapons – has thought and significance behind it. Music too. Peggy Lee’s song is so perfect here, a lesson in how music should be used – not for background, or mood, or to fill a silence – but to actually say something. The song is about being disillusioned and disappointed with life, and with love, and it could have been written for Don, for Peggy, for Joan, for Mad Men. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.
The song sets the tone for and haunts the episode. Death is in the air: Bert’s from before the mid-season break and now Rachel’s (from way back, remember, and way more than a fling for Don, a proper thing, albeit an extramarital thing, naturally). Now she’s gone, but not before an appearance in $15,000 Chinchilla (and very little else) herself. Her casting is a dream though; Don wakes up with the air hostess he went to bed with and who spilled wine on his rug (floor, not hair). Don’s doing a lot of dreaming, and thinking, about who he is, about the past, and the future. The falling can’t go on forever, not long now surely, before he hits the ground.
“When people die, everything gets mixed up,” the mysteriously familiar (to Don) waitress in the cafe tells him at the end of the episode. “When someone dies you just want to make sense out of it, but you can’t.”
“And then I fell in love …” says Peggy. Lee, not Olson, and yes – says – not sings; the verses are spoken. Love, too, is another disappointment. So why doesn’t she just jump off a building as well? Because even death is going to be a disappointment, that’s why.
A warning perhaps, that Don’s own demise, if and when it comes, and the end of Mad Men itself, will be a dissatisfying experience too? In some ways, when something has been so brilliant for so long (eight years!), during which these very real people’s lives have intertwined with our own, it’s inevitable that we’ll be left feeling empty, mixed up, struggling for sense, when it ends. But maybe there’s some kind of sense in that.
Torvill and Dean! Da dadada da dadada da da … (Ravel’s Bolero, obvs, can’t you read music?) They’re back home, in Nottingham, for Ice Rink on the Estate (ITV). It’s a well-worked TV formula, and has been used with singing, cooking, Shakespeare etc. You know how it goes: they’re all shy, embarrassed, naughty, distracted, not very good at it. It looks like it’s going to be a disaster, but through inspiration and a lot of hard work, they turn it around and pull it off, and in the end everyone cries.
T&D aren’t TV naturals. Chris says “guys, guys” a lot, struggles to keep order, let alone inspire. And Jayne doesn’t say very much at all, just smiles. They cobble together a show of sorts for the end of the first of three episodes, but these kids are still a long way from turning it around and pulling it off, and frankly I don’t think I’ll be around when they inevitably do. [Holds up a score of 2.3 for both technical ability and artistic impression.]
