Toto, We're Not in Sterling-Cooper Anymore (Mad Men)
"Can you believe this?" ~ Ken Cosgrove
Sterling Cooper isn't what it used to be: The British invasion has arrived ahead of the Beatles (and they brought some ants), they're firing people right and left (but only people we've never seen before and so have no emotional investment in) and nothing is quite as it used to be.
That's the whole point, apparently -- or so says creator Matthew Weiner in the after-episode preview of the new season, while Vincent Kartheiser (who plays Pete Campell) jokes, "It's just like that show 'Mad Men,' only better." Uh, hang on there, Vincent. I'm not so sure about that.
The agency is in flux, Don's almost in a stewardess, Sal's almost in a bell hop, Betty's nearly in labor, Ken's in ecstasy, Pete's in hell, Peggy's in a snit, Joan's in a funk, Bert Cooper's into the brandy, and I'm not sure I'm even in the same series.
"Our stories are straight." ~ Don to Betty
After two seasons of complex storylines larded with symbolism that can take repeated viewings to unravel, we get a fragmented episode in which the unsettling British takeover of the agency is played out against a visit to the client London Fog, leaving me to wonder if creativity has dropped sharply in the writers' room while we've been away. And don't even get me started about the revelation that Dick Whitman was named after the part of his father that his prostitute mother wanted to chop off.
Sal's "a little excited and a little shocked," but I'm afraid I'm only the latter.
Where are the relationships we've come to know and care about? At first, Don and Betty appear closer than we've ever seen them, but then Don moves on a stewardess without even a moment of the hesitation that he showed last season before descending into infidelity once again. Peggy seems to only care that her secretary is dissing her, Joan floats through the office like a woman who's already checked out of her job, leaving us no hint of where last season's rape by her fiance has left her, and Pete throws a predictable tantrum that tells us nothing we didn't already know about him. The rest of the cast appear as if only to reassure us they weren't axed during the hiatus.
Meanwhile, the same old jokes are trotted out: Roger loves his Stoli, Don comes up with a brilliant ground-breaking ad campaign while taking a catnap, Pete's petulantly unable to be satisfied with anything in his life.
Only a few moments stand out as fresh and real: Sal's possibly first sexual encounter with a man, powerfully and honestly played by actor Bryan Batt; Don's reassurance to his daughter Sally that he "will always come home and you'll always be my girl" after she tries to destroy his suitcase so he won't disappear again; the way a very pregnant and exhausted Betty softens as Don tenderly strokes her belly and talks her into sleeping.
Like Betty, Mad Men is in its third trimester, and things are getting awkward and uncomfortable. Let's hope that in both cases, there's new life to come that makes this all worthwhile.
In the meantime, I did love Trudy's hat.
"It's a gynocracy."
"I hadn't noticed."
~ The two Brits (so unimpressive I didn't catch their names) discussing Sterling-Cooper
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Comments
okay, i'm shutting up. please don't mock me for my minority opinion. i LOVE this show and i love your review. love lveo lveo and gratitude
But maybe Owl_Says_Who is right, regarding season openers. I do hope so!
But, yeah, some explosive things happened last season that seem to have been swept under the rug - although things have a way of coming back around 0n this show.
I am still very confused about Don/Dick's early life.
And Trudy's hat, OMG! I would have loved to have seen that actress's reaction when wardrobe put that on her head!
Like, why are Pete and Trudy so happy all of a sudden? There's still no talk of a baby in the picture, but there is an ease and unstrained affection between them I haven't seen before.
BTW, I think we have had our answer re: Joan. She's still wearing the ring and she's planning to quit. She's made her decision.
I was wondering about Peggy's talk about the secretary - at first it just seems like she's gossiping with Joan, which really isn't her way. Knowing that it is her secretary, I wonder how long it's going to take for her to take charge. Wonder why she's hesitating?
:)
According to an interview with Matthew Weiner that I read, it is supposed to be six months after the end of season two and not only is Joan married, but so is Roger.
One thing I didn't care for was the fugue state of Don, imagining or hallucinating his conception and birth.
Rebecca, I also thought of how last season's premiere episode was panned by a lot of people. I don't recall feeling that way. And I think they're a tough nut, esp for established culty shows like this one-- you can't really satisfy your viewers. I do get they didn't want to just do same-old same-old, especially since the whole story direction is now about change, but I thought this was a poor combination of quite a bit of same old (tired jokes) and then fragmented stabs at the new. I could go all grad school and say that it created in me the viewer the same feelings that the characters are having (and that would be true) but I'm not entirely sure that was the intention-- or if it was, if that's a good strategy for a TV show! Also, I also noticed how close Pete and Trudy seemed, which was unexpected given all we've seen of their relationship so far, not to mention Peggy's revelation.
Jeanette, of course I'm very willing to see what they do from here, and I trust any rockiness can be smoothed out. But it seemed a poor start to me, not up to their usual standards in any way. About DD's early life -- have you watched Season 1? That fills in a lot, and in some great episodes (e.g. The Hobo Code). I thought this flashback was just, well, bizarre (for one thing, it's not a true flashback but a fantasy since Don wasn't there or was a newborn and couldn't know what happened). To me, it absolutely cheapened the powerful depiction of his upbringing that was shown in Season 1 and made it some kind of backwoods joke.
And I actually did love Trudy's hat! It was very Audrey Hepburn. Trudy is considered to be the most "fashion forward" woman on the show and that hat was spot-on. She looks like she stepped out of a spread in the hottest fashion mag of that day.
Theodora, your comment actually made me laugh --in a good way! I agree the show can be very grim. I laughed several times at this one, but it seemed like cheap laughs. I almost included a comment from my partner K in my review. He only watches intermittently with me, but has grown to like the show more and more, but he said about halfway through, "There are some good jokes in here, but otherwise it feels like a soap opera." I think he nailed it. (BTW
Theodora, the dog storyline was almost unbearable to me, too! I did get the double meaning of what Don says to Sal, but it just seemed a bit too obvious to me, like picking London Fog as the client during the "British Invasion" show.
Brian, I agree that Joan's reaction does make sense in the way you describe. But we know she can't leave the show, so guess there's a broken engagement ahead. More soap opera-y stuff. I also didn't see Don hesitate to be unfaithful. Instead he responds to the engaged stewardess's saying that he might be her last chance at a fling, "I've been married a long time...there are lots of chances." I thought he seemed to have endorsed infidelity as a lifestyle and to have lost his moral conflict over it.
MTodd, Betty's pregnancy gives us a rough time estimate -- should be 5 to 6 months after end of last season.
Suz, I didn't get that Joan is married -- she sounds like she's still engaged, since she "can't wait to get out of this place" and he wanted her to quit when they married. If they wanted to convey that she's married, they didn't accomplish it in this ep!
Luis, thanks! and thanks to everyone else that commented. I think I lost some more thoughts when the system ate half my other comment - sorry.
First, by showing not just Peggy but DON using a typewriter!! (After I said secretaries did all the typing for everyone in that era.) And second, after I talked about how disempowered women were at work in that era, there's the exchange I quoted at the end of this post when the British male assistant says the office is a "gynocracy" because Joan had made him look bad in front of his boss (which in retrospect I wonder if was deliberate, which gives me hope for Joan, if so). It's not of course, but it felt almost like the show's writers were responding to me. heh.
http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/2009/08/mad-men-talking-out-of-town-with.html
MaryT, it would be hard to come in late, especially to an episode like this. But really any of them. Like all good dramas, a lot is built up over time and they don't bother explaining things for newbies. Even for those of us who watch it every time, there are things that are hard to catch on first viewing.
I found his thoughts on how he creates the show intriguing -- and he seems to promise that the next episode of this season will be better, so that's good news! and I thought it was funny to have him reference soap operas after my saying this ep flirted with that.
It's all pretty odd.
A little off topic but this episode was much better than the weirdness HBO foisted on viewers of TruBlood last night. That show has completely gone off the rails, to which you might legitimately say, how can you tell?
The writers for some reasons are trying to apply what is happening in today's corporate world to this show. It is not a deal breaker, but it is far from realistic.
MTodd, that's very interesting. I don't know the history of advertising that well, but certainly mergers occurred a lot more in the 80's and 90's in general. I had a different objection than you do to the British thing which was that I felt the Brits were portrayed fairly stereotypically so far: uptight, drinking tea, wishing for a good pub. I had a British boyfriend eons ago and when I complained once about how Americans were depicted (literally as cowboys) on a British TV show we were watching together, he slammed right back with how the British are usually portrayed on our shows. And he's right. But I thought this show would aim higher. Of course we'll see how it plays out, but on first impression...I'm not impressed.
The "gynocracy" comment is to be savored as future episodes are presented. Maybe it's not as much of a "man's world" as it appears to be.
The episode had a different feeling from the prior seasons, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. What happened to Duck Phillips?
This may have been addressed in comments but Don was born to a prostitute, and then given to the john's wife to be raised because the prostitute (don't know her name) died in childbirth, but then the wife of the john had her own biological child and treated Don (Dick) terribly.
But, what I'm wondering is how and why the prostitute's child ended up with the wife of the "john". Doesn't seem a very likely sequence of events!
That is not to say there is still not good stuff being produced, but companies want to break new ground, but are afraid of take chances so they end up playing it safe with things that worked in the past. But the problem is the future introduces a whole new set of problems and variables that may render past successes a failure.
There was a time when a creative director could pitch an idea and companies would run with it based solely on the word of the agency. That does not happen as much these days. When someone does something that really breaks through it is a matter of months before everyone else is copying it.
Yeah, it's kind of unsettling to see Don betray Betty again, so easily. But, god, she is so vacuous, and blandly cruel to her daughter, it's hard to feel empathy for her for very long. Plus I love the way that Don dealt with Sal's secret. It just passed right through his brain and morphed into this brilliantly perverse raincoat ad. It's a very very thinline between flat and subtle. Guess I'll have to watch it over again, which I so love doing.
Speaking as a gay man of 62, I've been in many sexual situations that -- minus the fire alarm-- unfolded just as rapidly.
The really interesting question is "What Does Don Really Think?" He sees Sal and the bellboy through thw window. They're not in a clinch but he knows "something has happened" because the bellboy's shirt is off. Is Don hip enough to know about Teh Ghey? Does he know that P.J. Clarke's was prime crusing territory for adventurous gays back in the early 60's? Or is it simply that now that "Sal Has a Secret" he feels a special kinship with him?
Can't wait for the next episode.
David Smith, as I mentioned in my review of last season's closer (linked at end of post above) Duck's goose was cooked when he tried to set himself up as President of the new company without knowing that Don didn't have a contract and so could walk away. Don won; Duck lost and left.
Jeanette, we see Don's fantasy about how that happened - the midwife showing up to hand over the child since Don's father's wife kept having stillborn children (which she knew, since she also delivered them). I don't know if that's how it happened or a fantasy. I don't think it's that unlikely in the rural area they depict him growing up in (on a farm). She wasn't some big city prostitute, but a young woman who made money that way out of desperation, probably out of a shack or room of a house, the way women always have in areas like that. Small towns are different, and even more so then. I didn't find it implausible at all. Hell, they probably were all neighbors and knew each other.
MTodd, nice observations about how advertising was more instinctual and less research driven in the MM era! We haven't seen too much reference to research on MM. I can't recall where I read it now (I've been reading a lot of MM articles) but maybe in Salon, that Sterling Cooper is deliberately not portrayed as being cutting edge and that it's intended to be seen as a dying relic.
Juliet, after the fact, I read some other reviews of the ep and one said they thought the London Fog ad idea was solely a coded message from Don to Sal and would never fly with the clients as they were depicted (very conservative) and I agree. It seemed highly implausible, especially for that era. But that was part of made it stick out for me -- unlike other ad ideas of Don's, it wasn't smoothly integrated into the story and plausible as an actual campaign. It was a plot device.
Good boy, Steve. If only K. were as obedient as you are.
David E, I think Don is pretty accepting in certain ways. Not with Betty (see the bikini incident) but of other men, and definitely of secrets (see Peggy and the baby). I think this stretches his understanding (he's a typical het male of the era, after all) but I think he'll be cool with it, and I think the last thing Don would ever do is expose someone else's secret. I did think Sal's story and how Batt played it was the strongest part of the whole episode. It was really quite moving, and I'm looking forward to further Sal developments this season.
Dr. FeelGood, well, aren't you ALWAYS right?