So, best episode of Mad Men ever? I might have already asked that before in one of these recaps, but as the series seems to be getting better and better I may well have a new favourite.
That’s not to say that the episode was completely flawless, for one the big Liston-Clay boxing match was mainly an opportunity for a lot of casual racism – which may be historically accurate, but can on occasions be a bit of a lazy way for the writers to create humour (as is the use of historic events to make the characters look like idiots – Don’s backing of Liston is another one of his boneheaded decisions, along with his favouring Nixon over Kennedy in the first season – it might be the case that the writers are in fact using these events to challenge our assumptions, to show us that these things we take for granted – Kennedy’s iconic status, Nixon’s corruption, Muhammad Ali’s brilliance – were not always a sure thing, but it does tend to come off as a cheap way of knocking their characters down a peg or two). In fact with all the racist comments flying about, Peggy’s story about her dad burning all his Nat King Cole records after her mother said she found the singer handsome seemed blissfully innocent.
Harry kicked things with the petty glee of a playground bully (or more accurately for Harry, as the sort of kid who hangs around with the playground bully to look tough) by labelling Danny ‘such a Jew’ as Danny quibbled at having to pay for tickets that Harry had got for free. Miss Blankenship then raised the game with her comment comparing the boxing match to throwing a dollar on the floor in front of two ‘negroes’ (somehow I don’t like her any the less despite this, she can be excused for being from a very different generation). The two were actually beaten to the title of most unpleasant person in SCDP – that honour was once again taken by Stan Rizzo, art director extraordinaire and all round dick, who admittedly wasn’t especially racist, but continued in his campaign of harassment against Peggy. Hopefully, he’ll soon be arrested for being a pervert (I’d also settle for him falling foul of the law because of his running an illegal gambling ring) and SCDP will have to find a replacement. I’m not saying that Sal has to come back but….
Anyway, what made this episode great was that it, for the most part, just featured Don and Peggy, Mad Men’s most perfect couple (who of course can never get together, it would ruin everything if they did). Due to Don’s general distractedness, and Peggy and the creative team’s inability to come up with a campaign for Samsonite that Don considered acceptable (Peggy blamed both Danny’s lack of talent and Don’s negative attitude, and although she may have a point it’s not like she’s totally blameless, the Samsonite ideas were pretty ropey), the two ended up spending the night alone in the office.
Not that there wasn’t plenty going on to distract them, what with it being Peggy’s birthday, meaning her wet boyfriend Mark kept phoning to see when she would be leaving to join him for a romantic evening, which somehow involved the rest of her family. Maybe Mark really was trying to do something nice for Peggy, who had never had a surprise party, but considering just how awful her family are (two years after the events of the last season and her mother is still showing complete disapproval of Peggy’s lifestyle, not only did she sternly tell Peggy on the phone that she doesn’t have the option of picking another ‘nice man’, but she couldn’t even summon up the courtesy to refer to Peggy’s roommate by name, or as anything other than ‘the roommate’), Peggy’s dismay at Mark attempting to win her family over with the dinner was quite justified – whose ideal birthday would involve spending time with such a dour, judgemental bunch? Maybe now she’s got rid of Mark she’ll be able to take something up with the guy she met in the closet during that police raid a few weeks ago.
Don probably should have shown more contrition at denying Peggy her birthday night out, rather than just yelling at her (during which her bitter feelings about the Glocoat campaign finally came out) and making her cry, but to be fair he did have phone calls of his own to worry about, as for him the evening spent working was a way to avoid making the painful phone call that he’d have to make to California after Anna’s niece Stephanie had called earlier on that day (as a bonus, staying in the office also got him out of spending the evening with either the young bucks of SCDP, or Roger and his company for the evening ‘the Alcoholics Anonymous Brotherhood’ – apparently now that he’s sober, Freddy Rumsen has taken up collecting Indian arrowheads, and boring whoever’s there to listen to him go on about them). Luckily there was something in the office to take their minds off their terrible evenings, in the form of Roger Sterling’s work in progress ‘Sterling’s Gold’, AKA the gift that keeps on giving. As Don pointed out there were an embarrassment of riches to be found in there, and it was hard to pick a favourite out of the revelations revealed in this chapter – Bert Cooper having no testicles (and allegedly having the doctor who performed the procedure killed, although hopefully this was just Roger making a joke), Roger having a brief fling with Miss Blankenship and Bert supposedly being jealous about this, or the fact that Ida Blankenship used to be such a hellcat that she earned the title ‘the Queen of Perversions’.
Tensions lightened considerably, the two went to the nearest Greek diner for a birthday meal, until the presence of a cockroach on a mural of the Acropolis made them change venues for somewhere a bit darker (rather than cleaner) and the two found themselves in a bar, listening to all glorious 90 seconds of the Liston-Clay fight. In addition to being a nice chance for the two to reconnect away from the stressful environment of work, their evening out also provided an opportunity to show how close the two are to each other – both overcoming disadvantage to become (very good) copywriters and both having difficult family backgrounds, including not only witnessing their fathers die a violent death (Peggy’s dad’s qualifies as a violent one as there was boxing on the TV when he had a heart attack, hence why Peggy doesn’t like sports) but being children and alone at the time. On top of this both had somehow earned the disapproval of Peggy’s mother, who was convinced that Don was the one who had got her pregnant as he was the only guy at work who visited her in hospital. The similarities between the two meant that Don was relaxed enough to take the unusual step of volunteering some information about his past (as his refusal to fill out Dr Miller’s questionnaire earlier on the season shows, he still isn’t that comfortable about doing so), briefly discussing his dead mother and his time in Korea.
For once Mad Men decided to show the consequences of Don’s all-day drinking sessions, with him running to the toilet to vomit as soon as they got back to the office, making him seem more human and vulnerable again (as did him needing Peggy to escort him there, and the speck of vomit that stayed on his shirt for the rest of the episode). Which meant that the appearance of a drunken Duck Philips at the SCDP office came at an especially bad time – fired from his job at Gray, and irritated with Peggy for turning down his idea of them starting an agency together, Duck was out to create chaos, starting with him attempting to defecate in Roger’s chair (Duck now being so pathetic that he couldn’t even work out he was in the wrong office – as he’s still out for Draper, for no particular reason). Peggy once again was on the receiving end of misogynistic insults (in fact Peggy spent much of the episode being insulted on all-sides despite it being her birthday, in addition to arguing with her judgemental mother and overeager boyfriend on the phone, Don and sleazy Stan, earlier on that afternoon she had run into Pete’s wife Trudie in the bathroom and had to deal with her condescendingly pleasant manner – ’26 is still very young’ may have been intended as a compliment, but it didn’t sound it), but now she had Don, who was feeling just about drunk enough to be chivalrous, on her side to leap to her defence although he failed completely as somehow he was even more drunk than Duck. After witnessing the bitter, twisted face of Duck as he leered down at Draper, and his bragging about supposedly killing 17 men in Okinawa, I think we can safely label Duck a psychopath now, fortunately it didn’t take too much effort on Peggy’s part to get rid of him (hopefully for good).
After all that, the dramatic highpoint of the episode seemed incredibly quiet and subdued, probably because by most show’s standards it was incredibly quiet and subdued. I think that many people who have tried but failed to get into Mad Men have done so as it seems that not very much happens in the show, which is sort of true, so much time and effort is expended on covering business meetings and deals, and something dramatic does happen, it’s downplayed to the point of barely existing. Although in many ways this is one of the things that makes Mad Men so fascinating – essentially the characters are impotent against the situations they find themselves in and the best they can do is accept them or adapt around them, as Don did here by finally manning up enough to call Stephanie in California to hear the bad news about Anna. The whole of the episode’s finale was well handled, with Don and Peggy sharing an intimate (which in Don’s case is not synonymous with sexual) night together as he fell asleep on her knee, him breaking down on receiving the news that ‘the only person who ever knew him’ had died, Peggy assuming responsibility over Don for once as she tried to comfort him, and the final flourish of Peggy going back to Don’s office later that morning to find him sitting there, fresh faced and confident, with his instructing her to leave his office door open as perhaps a sign that he’s now a bit more willing to open up to people (I’m also quite glad that the ghostly image of Anna carrying a suitcase that appeared to Don in his sleep didn’t give him direct inspiration for the Samsonite campaign).
And that was about it. The streamlined nature of the plot didn’t just provide an opportunity to learn more about the series’ most interesting partnership, but also made it much easier for me to write about coherently without having to go off on too many tangents (and as an added bonus, we didn’t have to see any of Betty’s scowly face this week!).
