In many ways this week’s episode showcased everything that’s great about Mad Men – the muted sadness that gradually unveils itself over the slow moving plots, the ever-shifting character motivations and sympathies, moments of farce and laddish humour, and of course the shallow pleasures of seeing devastatingly attractive cast members in varying degrees of undress (this week it was Don stripping down to his underwear, perhaps somewhat gratuitously, in order to do some painting). Of course it helped that the episode featured none of Betty’s sour-faced presence, and very little Pete Campbell (other than a brief non-speaking appearance at the very end, the only way he figured in the episode was in the form of Lane Pryce’s very well-observed zinger ‘Campbell’s friendly, although I believe unintentionally’. Although that being said, the episode did ignore most of the series’ rich cast of supporting characters, not just Pete and Betty, instead focusing on just three – Don, Joan and Lane.
Following the Christmas party hi-jinx of last week’s episode, the staff of SCDP were now focusing on the holidays themselves, in particular New Year (I’m assuming that Christmas hadn’t actually happened yet, it would be a bit pointless for the staff to come in just after that holiday only to go off again for the New Year, but it seemed strange how no-one mentioned Christmas itself, so maybe they did), and Don was getting ready to jet off to Acapulco. Which was probably just as well what with the uncomfortable proximity when in the office to his latest conquest, his secretary Alison. We weren’t shown whatever it was she was typing so determinedly at the end of the last episode, there wasn’t really time for her to do anything much really, but the tension was definitely still there.
Don wasn’t actually planning on going directly to Acapulco, instead having a day in California first, providing Harry with an excuse to once again do his usual ‘I’m so important as I know people in LA’ schtick by asking Don to have a meeting with a guy while he was out there, which Don wisely refused, despite Harry’s tantalising claim that the guy would probably end up casting Don in something. Instead Don spent his Californian stopover visiting Anna, the ex-wife of the ‘real’ Don Draper (the man who he stole his identity from in Korea), who as was revealed in the penultimate episode of the second season Don (or as to use his proper name, as she quite rightly did when talking to him, Dick) had formed a close bond with (it might be interesting to note that one of the major scenes she had in that episode also took place at Christmas, creating something of a parallel with her scenes in this episode, indeed even the now cynical post-divorce Don brightened up on seeing her in this episode, which almost matched the youthful Don’s enthusiasm in that previous Christmas scene as he excitedly told Anna about how in love he was with Betty).
This is where the muted sadness came in, after spending the night out with Anna’s rebellious niece Stephanie, mainly so Anna could get some pot from her, which of course ended with Don putting the moves on the young girl when driving her back to her mother’s house, Stephanie informed Don that the ever-frail Anna was suffering from cancer, which had gotten so advanced her mother had decided there was no point in telling Anna about it. Realising that his offers to flash around cash in order to take her to some ‘proper’ doctors wasn’t going to do any good, Don instead had to settle for just accepting this, and not even being able to let on to Anna that anything was wrong as Stephanie had insisted he say nothing. The shot that followed Don getting in, where he was left to numbly sit on the sofa alone as the sun gradually came up, was a bit clichéd in my opinion, but the quiet drama that followed was really quite moving, with Don deciding to spring into action the only way he could – by painting over the water damage on Anna’s living room wall (which is where the slightly pervy underwear scene came in, although as Anna herself said ‘I’m not going to fight watching Dick Whitman paint my living room in his shorts’). Following a brief discussion of UFOs, quite probably result of the joint that Anna and Don were smoking at the time, a brief interruption from Anna’s sister who Don confronted about Anna’s condition and treatment, unsuccessfully, outside (resulting in her offering the quite devastating, and really quite accurate character breakdown of Don, that he had no right to play a part in the decision as he was ‘just a man in a room, with a chequebook’) and some playful wall decorating Don and Anna did on the freshly painted patch, the really heartbreaking moment of the episode kicked in as, realising that he couldn’t stay any longer without letting on to Anna that something was wrong, Don blurted out that he had to leave, to which Anna replied serenely ‘I want you to go. I want you to do everything you want to’. Knowing that he would most likely never see her again, Don was left to ‘promise’ to bring the kids to see her at Easter, and take a last look at the woman who only the previous night had said to him ‘I know everything about you and I still love you’, which is not something anybody else in Don’s life could say accurately and really mean. As if to emphasise Don’s complete isolation at that moment, the action then cut to him on the plane, where a Stewardess offered him a cheery ‘Happy New Year’ while handing him a limp looking party hat, which, it goes without saying, Don really wasn’t in the mood to wear.
Meanwhile Joan was concerning herself with the imminent departure of her husband for his army training, ranging from her checking with her gynaecologist to see if they would be able to conceive when she came off the pill (apparently she had had a couple of abortions in the past, a subject that she and her doctor, although close, skirted around very discretely), and trying to arrange some additional holiday leave as her husband had to work on New Year’s, which Lane not only turned down, due to the usual stick-up-his-arse manner he has when it comes to anything related to accounting and office management, but did so with the completely unwarranted insult ‘Don’t go and cry about it’. Fortunately Joan is made of stronger stuff than that and didn’t lose her poise and dignity (until later when she threw a bouquet of roses at him, but that was over a different matter, and not entirely unjustified).
Instead Joan made the best of what she could, by staying up until 5am when her husband got in from work so they could ‘celebrate New Year’s in Hawaii’. And here’s where the shift in character sympathy happened as we actually got to see why she was with her slimebag, whiny, date-raping husband with him he proving himself to be a real charmer who genuinely cared for her. After cutting herself when trying to make orange juice, her husband leapt into action, bandaging her up while reassuring her she’d be fine and didn’t need to go to the hospital and, in the face of her continuing panic (it’s always strange seeing the formidable Joan reveal her softer side) using the same distraction trick he did when working with kids. The joke he told her afterwards about hillbillies and donkey dick was perhaps a bit inappropriate though, I hope he didn’t use that one on the kids as well.
It turned out that Lane was laying into Joan as he had other things on his mind, and not just the accounts as usual. Rather than spending the holiday with his wife and son, who had flown back to London for the occasion, he was stuck in New York by himself and, as he revealed to Don later on in the episode, facing the end of his marriage. Realising he was in the wrong, and that he’d have to patch things up with both women, Lane made the grand gesture of sending the women flowers (to be fair they were rather nice bouquets, but the predictability of the gesture definitely reflected Lane’s lack of imagination, and people skills). And he even managed to fuck this up (the florist mixed up the messages on the bouquets resulting in Joan being offended, his wife furious as she thought he was having an affair, and Lane’s poor secretary getting the blame, and the sack, although it might have been for the best considering the girl didn’t know what ‘egregious’ meant, leading to Joan’s lighting-fast response ‘It means I can’t believe I hired you’), and so he was facing an even more miserable New Year, at least until when Don showed up unannounced at the office as he had understandably blown off his trip to Acapulco.
Following a boozy day the two spent in their offices, guzzling a fine bottle of whisky Lane’s father had got for him for Christmas (‘He’s an alcoholic who thinks he’s connecting’ as Lane bitterly explained) rather than doing any work, Don decided they should go to the movies, even if they couldn’t find anything they wanted to see – Lane’s instant dismissal of Don’s suggestion of ‘Send Me No Flowers’ was a definite laugh out loud moment, as was the cutting from their pondering The Umbrella’s of Cherbourg (‘Apparently “It’s for all the young lovers”’) to the monster movie they eventually decided on seeing. I’m not the first to point out that the programme-makers made a bit of a cock-up in including footage of Godzilla spoof/rip-off Gamera, when the film wouldn’t be released in the USA for almost another two years, but on the other hand it’s nice to know that they aren’t perfect, despite their normally exceptional quality of everything about the series. Anyway, it offered us the chance to see Lane let loose a little, even if it was by him making incredibly racist comments at the screen, and the audience members who were telling him to be quiet. This out of character behaviour was no doubt the result of him being extremely drunk as the men had taken a flask of the whisky to the movies with them, and he got even more raucous (and amusing) as the evening went on, declaring the gargantuan steak he had ordered to be his ‘Texas Belt Buckle’ and then gleefully heckling back at the, unbelievably awful, stand-up comic the two were watching ‘We’re not homosexuals, we’re divorced!’
The lads night out continued with Don’s regular prostitute turning up, with a ‘friend’ in tow for Lane and the four left the club (rather rudely just as the main act, a not-at-all-bad Dylan-esque singer, started his set) to go back to Don’s place. Fortunately we were spared the details of what went on in the bedroom there, much as I like fussy old Lane, I don’t really want to see him in bed.
And so the episode ended with the men bonding over a morning after cup of coffee, and making their way into the office for the first meeting of the New Year, which Joan commenced with the words ‘Alright gentlemen, shall we begin 1965′. Here’s to another ‘magnificent year’ for SCDP, as Lane would say. And here’s to another magnificent episode next week, or even one as half as good as this one was.
