Human beings have desires – small and grand, pure and base, fleeting and lasting – and we spend every moment of our lives satisfying one or another of them.   (After all, even when we do things for others, it is to satisfy some desire of our own, including the need to do good or connect.) The 9th episode of Season 3 of Mad Men, “Wee Small Hours” takes us deeper in what several of the characters want (and don’t want), and their mostly-frustrated attempts to satisfy those desires.  Some, like Betty, find the cost too great; some, such as Don and Sal, take the plunge.  Others like Carla find their dreams temporarily deferred, and tragically, some like the four small girls killed in Alabama, and later, Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, will have their lives snatched away before their dreams can be fulfilled.

The episode opens with Betty being ravished by Henry Francis on the ridiculously overstuffed antique fainting couch she recently bought (to her decorator’s horror) – an image that we quickly learn to no surprise is merely a dream, broken by the ringing phone and her baby’s cry – her real life calling.

Betty’s arc in this episode is perhaps the most predictable, and even clichéd.  After her sizzling and glamorous Roman Holiday with Don, she temporarily revived and seemed happy, but to Don’s puzzlement in the last episode, that cocktail of a jaunt has had a bitch of a hangover, making Betty realize just how small and boring her normal life is.  

And we feel this disparity too – as played by the extraordinary beauty January Jones, Betty has always seemed out of place in an apron in suburbia, but never more so than after we’ve seen her looking like a movie star in Rome, speaking fluent Italian, and fending off men right and left.  Clearly this is where she belongs – in an exciting and glamorous life, without kids, without a husband, traveling and able to exercise her Italian and whatever other foreign tongue she’s mastered that we don’t know about.  (After all, we just learned she was an Anthro major in college!)

Of course, as another character will say later, we know where that road leads – and Betty doesn’t want to end up a “party girl” like Holly Golightly or the old roommate she saw in Manhattan one night with Don.  Always the good girl, she chose marriage and children instead, and while she picked a promising man who has become very successful, she was no Lorelei Lee – she didn’t marry for money but for love.  

Betty is at heart a romantic, and nothing symbolizes that more than that absurd fainting couch.  Like Hilton, she wants the moon, and nothing less.  When she gets a (much) lesser offer from Henry of a romp in his office, she turns it down flatly (even after his generous offer to upgrade it to a motel) and names what it is – tawdry.  When Henry says he doesn’t know what she wants, she nods in agreement – she doesn’t know either, but we feel she’s getting warmer.

Like her self, Betty’s mistakes are attenuated.  With the exception of her fling in the bar, she puts out feelers only to withdraw when she gets a response.  (She’s the exact opposite of Harry, who in this episode hilariously declares that “I’m not going to panic and do something stupid like I usually do.”)  Henry tells her that he had to wait for her to act, since she was the married one, and even this seems to take her by surprise, as if the idea of being anything other than the traditional passive woman just doesn't occur to her.  (A theme echoed when the fundraising woman has to tell her, “No, dear, you begin” to get the meeting started.) 

Given her intense self-control and fear of acting, it’s not surprising Betty’s married to a man who, while calculating and in command at work, has poor impulse control when it comes to drinking (and driving) and women. 

After having been symbolically castrated (or at least roped and tied and branded) by having to sign a contract in order to keep his job, Don is feeling more constricted than he ever has in his life.  On the one hand, he’s literally flying high, visiting hotels all over the world and being asked for advice by Conrad Hilton, the big kahuna client he courted and has now landed. But as characters in this show repeatedly find, getting what you think you want doesn’t always make you happy.  In fact, on this show, I think the score so far is that, well, it never does.  Which is why they’re all out there still searching for what will make them truly feel content. 

Just as The Sopranos showed not only the emptiness of contemporary American life with its focus on status and materialism in the form of possessions like McMansions and SUV’s, but suggested that the relentless pursuit of middle class affluence could be considered criminal in its cost to the world, Mad Men (created by Sopranos alum Matthew Weiner) depicts both the unsatisfying emptiness and moral and personal cost of pursuing the American Dream, which (as Don notes) by the early 60’s had Americans living as only royalty did in other countries.

That American dream takes center stage in this episode, as espoused by Conrad “Manifest Destiny” Hilton, who seeks to put a Hilton in every corner of the world, convinced that he’s spreading not just capitalism and democracy but God, which we have and those rotten Communists do not.  The show’s writers boldly draw a parallel between the lauded Marshall Plan that restored Europe after WWII (and which was intended to, and by all evidence succeeded at, preventing World War III, since economic devastation triggered Hitler’s rise) and America’s economic and cultural hegemony as it gets going full steam in the 60’s, driven by commercial products, as well as products for commercials, the very thing that Don creates.

Hilton:  You never heard that?
Don:  I did, but when I hear you say it, it sounds beautiful.

Don and Hilton (appearing in a requisite cowboy hat) are in league to win hearts and minds (before that phrase will be applied so famously to VietNam), and I think we are meant to feel the hubris and danger of a seemingly innocent business collaboration with an arguably noble purpose – to get Americans to travel more to other countries.  The problem lies in how they are to travel:  in their cocoon of Americanness, sheltered inside Hilton hotels that reproduce the familiar comforts of home (if your home comes with room service) thus foiling the very point of travel, which is to experience other cultures and be opened up.

Tourists may only be obnoxious, but Americans doing business abroad, especially that pesky military industrial complex that Eisenhower had just warned the nation about, were escalating their involvement not just in Viet Nam but in many other countries, doing great harm in their attempt to spread their Americanness.  Mad Men’s writers make this connection explicit when Hilton talks of wanting his hotels to be like “missions” spread out all over the world, evangelizing and converting those godless heathens to our way of life which he assures Don, people want once they see it.  And in fact, often that has been true, leading to great environmental and cultural cost.

Hilton:  America is wherever we look, wherever we’re going to be.
Don:  That’s very good.
Hilton:  You’re the one who said that to me.
Don:  Well, I guess it’s not that memorable.

If Hilton is on a mission to spread God the Father (and his son, the Holy Dollar), then Don is simply on a mission to find the father.   When Hilton tells him that he’s his “angel” and more like a son to him than his own (famously dissolute) sons, having bootstrapped himself up just as Hilton did, Don is moved almost to tears and after thanking him says “I mean that” – an admission of how often he doesn’t tell the truth.

Having recently hallucinated about his father (in the motel room with the two proto-hippies who robbed him) and having been sideswiped by Betty’s sour mood after their rapprochement in Rome, as well as chafing under his many contractual obligations (both at home and at work), Don grasps at Hilton’s approval, despite having just recently explained to Betty the art of keeping people wanting you rather than the other way around.  

Don’s famous elusiveness that seduces all who encounter him is being eroded by his increasing commitment in all areas of his life, but never more so than when he finally lets himself want something:  Not just Hilton’s approval but his love (as Hilton astutely notices).  Having been as smoothly seduced by Hilton as he has seduced countless others, Don experiences a karmic turnabout when Hilton also mimics Don’s own withdrawal and parsimoniousness of feeling.  Don has failed to give Hilton exactly what he wants and while that’s not an unfamiliar experience in his marriage, being rejected so soundly by a client is clearly foreign to him, leaving him scrambling and uncharacteristically clumsy, telling Hilton: I’m sure there’s a way to fit that into this.

But there isn’t.  Hilton acknowledges that the campaign Don has produced is clever -- it just isn’t what he wants, which is literally the moon. Having shared moonshine with this gruff paterfamilias in the wee small hours, as well as having been made an honorary son, Don is blindsided by the rejection, as well as confounded by his rare failure to understand what a client wants.  Interestingly, while missing the aspirational “man on the moon” idea, what he heard was the domestic side – about turning exotic places into home – a neat symbol of how Don himself is being tamed and domesticated.

I’m going home and the whole idea is to run there.  ~ Suzanne to Don

Don’s desires also seem to be coming home.  While they at first turn to Betty, who he reaches for eagerly after they return from Rome, having been spurned by her, he doesn’t stray far.  As expected, he pursues Suzanne Farrell, Sally’s former teacher, who he marvels at running into (while she is out running both away from and back to home, herself).  As she points out, he’s taking a huge risk by having an affair literally so close to home, but he say she doesn’t care, that in fact it’s a sign of how much he wants her, and after a predictably short nanosecond of hesitation, she succumbs to the Don Draper charm as all women must, no matter the cost to their own lives. (Was Don the model for James Bond?)

Don:  I can’t stop thinking about you.
Suzanne:  Because I’m new and different. Or maybe I’m exactly the same.

As Suzanne herself says, she knows where this road will lead, and so do we.  Or will it?  Are we deep enough into this series that Don and Betty might divorce, and Don take a second wife?  Hard to believe, even if Suzanne has that second wife feeling about her – ostensibly different in many ways from the first wife in both looks and attitude, and yet, we feel, destined to turn out the same, as Suzanne herself astutely points out.  Don sees Betty as a child (and she often seems to behave and feel like one) and Suzanne takes care of children – Don surely must think this is an upgrade.

While Don is at least temporarily satisfying his desires, Sal’s are put on hold, at least till the tantalizing end of the episode.  In a painful turn of events, he loses his job after rejecting the advances of a client, the Lucky Strikes favored son Lee Garner, Jr., thus accurately showing that not only women are victims of sexual harassment.   Sal may be secretly longing for sex with a man, but like everyone else, he wants to choose his partners, and not give into a man he rightly calls a bully.  A seemingly minor point, but one that is not always accorded gay male characters, who are all-too-often depicted as ready for anyone, any time.  

Sal:  There’s been a misunderstanding.
Lee, Jr:  I know what I know.

Sal, like everyone else in this episode, wants what he wants, when he wants it – and not when or what someone else does.  He pays dearly for this, not just by being fired, but also profoundly humiliated by Don, even after he has bravely confessed the truth of what occurred.  We see a very ugly side of Don when he suggests that Sal should have given in to the client (after chiding Harry for “sticking his nose” into the account, he apparently wishes Sal had done the same), and with his phrase “you people” implies an entire litany of homophobic insult that he doesn’t give utterance to.   With $25 million a year and the agency’s entire fortunes resting on retaining the account, and coming after Hilton’s rejection, Don’s feelings are understandable but unforgivable.  Once again, greed and American business are indicted, with a literal pound of flesh being demanded to fulfill the demands of the marketplace.

Don:  Because nothing could have happened, because you’re married?
Sal:  I swear on my mother’s life
Don:  You sure you want to do that?  Who do you think you’re talking to?

Even for a episode full of them (even Sally want a case to put her pencils in), Sal’s storyline positively bulges with sexual innuendo and symbolism, from Pete sucking down cigarette smoke merely to please Lee Jr as well as telling him a joke with the punchline, “And the hillbilly said, that ain’t my finger” to Sal’s explanation of the ad (“We want people to focus on the Lucky”) and  joke to his film editor (“You sound like you have a pastrami in your mouth”) to Lee Jr’s double entendres (“I had a long wet lunch,” “I told you, I want what I want” and “Let’s take a risk together, shall we, Sally?”) as well as his poignant evocation of the desires of a closeted gay man to be seen (“I want him staring right at us at the end”) which Sal notes will make the TV ad’s viewers uncomfortable, just as many straights feel when asked to face gay people directly and as equals.

The twist comes in Sal’s final scene, in which we see him phoning Kitty to lie about working late, while standing outside a park where several seemingly gay men gather.  Has Sal decided that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose?  Is he about to lose his gay virginity?  More importantly, is he doing it in desperation, or even in preparation for a sacrifice he feels he must make in order to save his career?   I fear so, and the sadness in his tone and face in that scene seem to make it clear that he’s not there in eager anticipation.

In the background as always, Carla has a small but poignant storyline in this episode, one in which we sense her own desires largely through the subtle yet revealing emotions that play on her face (kudos to actress Deborah Lacey for her fine portrayal, in both senses of that word.) 

Having observed Betty’s encounter with Henry (who has rashly shown up at the door to try to sweep her off her feet – not the type of "moon" that Betty is looking for, at least not when she’s at home in her suburban shorts rather than in her flowing and flowering dress on the fainting couch), Carla seems entirely wise to Betty’s lies.  Betty at first appears to care about how Carla sees her, going to the trouble of arranging a fundraiser at her house to cover her tracks (as well as wanting to see Henry again), rather than simply seeing Carla as a clueless or obedient domestic who doesn’t matter.  Yet she finds the death of the four girls in Alabama a reason to back off on civil rights, utterly missing the look on Carla’s face as she blithely opines that the country just isn’t ready yet, and misses a similar look when she chides Bobby for barking at Carla only to follow it with the devastating reason:  “She works for me, not you.” 

As Langston Hughes wrote, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it shrivel up like a raisin in the sun?  Or does it explode?”  It’s hard to imagine Carla (who outdoes even Betty in her extreme personal control) ever bursting out with her own dreams and wishes, but then this is the 60’s, and that’s exactly what happened in that decade:  Formerly buttoned-down, play-it-safe types surprised not only their co-workers and families with what they did and said, but shocked themselves with what they were capable of – and what they realized they wanted.  

In the wee small hours, things happen.  People have sex, but they also have conversations, dreams and dark thoughts.  They realize that what they have isn’t enough for them, or agonize over having been told that they themselves are not enough.  Either way, it’s enough to keep you up all night.