With Thanksgiving out of the way, Christmas is looming on the horizon for the staff of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (hereafter referred to as SCDP) and, predictably the booze is flowing freely. This being despite the intervention of Lane, whose fretting about the cost of the misuse of office supplies has lead to a downgrading the Christmas party, and the arrival of Freddy Rumsen, now sixteen months sober, and considerably more boring as a result.
Arriving as if out of nowhere into Roger’s office, Freddy came looking for his old job back, and bearing a small, but not insignificant, contract for Pond’s Cold Cream, supposedly gained through fraternity contacts, but actually (as given away by his panicked response to seeing Roger returning from a boozy lunch with the client) as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous. Although he was welcomed back by pretty much everyone at first, it wasn’t long before his presence became problematic. Right from the off in fact he made his distrust of Pete clear to Roger (which is understandable really, what with Pete continuing to be an awful human being), but then went on to exert his non-existent authority over Peggy during their work on the Pond’s account. This coupled with his insistence on ignoring the market research and casting an older actress for the campaign (apparently, at least according to Wikipedia, the real life advertising campaigns for the product have been marked in the past by their controversial choice of celebrity endorsements, and it looked like the controversy was spreading to the SCDP offices too, what with Peggy’s dismissal of Freddy’s actress wish-list with ‘Nothing makes old ladies look good’, at first an enjoyably bitchy comment, which then seemed to reek of a blunt cruelty that was almost Draper-esque the more you thought about it), and his particularly offensive take on the idea behind it (‘If you use Pond’s you’ll get married… Or we could go the other way, if you don’t use it you’ll never get married’) resulted in Peggy finally losing her temper and calling him old-fashioned, which the formerly jovial Freddy seemed quite hurt by. By the end of the episode however, the two had managed to patch up their differences, with Peggy even admitting to Freddy that he was sort of right about her wanting to get married, and him in turn offering her some surprisingly wise relationship advice, even if Peggy did go on to ignore it.
Don meanwhile was feeling pretty distant to the whole thing – only engaging in business chat when filling Pete and Peggy on developments in the ham account that we saw last week (apparently they’re not happy despite their sales going through the roof), instead facing the thought of spending Christmas alone in Acapulco, rather than with his family and having to settle for merely having a distant influence on their Christmas. His playing the role of Santa for them – as Betty and Sally had addressed the Draper kids’ letter not to the North Pole but to Don’s office instead – did, I think, allow him to have a small bit of petty revenge against Betty, as her inevitably perfectly planned yet tense family Christmas was now going to be interrupted by the noises emitted from Bobby’s drum kit and transistor radio, Gene’s fire truck and Sally’s Beatles 7”s (this being the first mention the fab four have had in the series, despite the action now taking place during the era of Beatlemania).
But still, things might be looking up for Don, what with the appearance of two potential new romantic interests for him, to go along with last week’s Bethany Van Nuys. His frequent drunken fumblings with his key on getting back to his apartment had aroused the suspicions of his neighbour, young and pretty nurse Phoebe, who he did even manage to get into his bed, although it wasn’t a particularly sexy encounter, what with it being a result of her helping him get into his apartment as he was once again too drunk to stand up (she even compared him to her dad, as he was also a drunk). More promising was the arrival of glamorous psychologist/market researcher Dr Faye Miller. He may not have endeared himself to her at first by ducking out of the demonstration of her psychological test, presumably because he was once again troubled by the thought of having to give out information about his private life and past (like in the Advertising Age interview in last week’s episode), but on her revealing herself to be an admirer of his work, Don did let his guard down a little around her, and some chemistry started to develop. That being said, I could have done without Dr Miller’s other scene in the episode, where her and her colleague Dr Atherton discuss state funded medicine with Bert Cooper at the Christmas party, although the issue continues to be a very relevant one for the American consciousness, the insertion of a thinly veiled bit of topical satire into the show seemed to be a rare case of the writing in Mad Men being a little too on-the-nose.
Meanwhile, Betty was off attempting to plan her first Christmas with new husband Henry, which saw the reappearance of a second old face as creepy Glen emerged sinisterly from a thicket during their Christmas tree shopping expedition. To be fair there wasn’t anything that sinister about it really, he did supposedly have a reason for being there as he had been given a given a job at the company (although his story did seem a bit shaky, his segue from talking about his job to his stepfather suggested that perhaps he had been forced to take the job reluctantly, and for that matter, I really wouldn’t put creepy Glen in a job where he is expected to use a knife), it’s just the presence of Glen that made it sinister. Although creator Matthew Weiner’s son Marten puts in a great performance as Glen – or rather because he does – his appearances really are kind of unwelcome for me as he puts me on edge, what with his behaviour often being that of a borderline sociopath. He did actually manage to use his abilities of being incredibly weird to do something very sweet for Sally though, as obviously with her now getting a bit older he’s transferred his inappropriate attraction from her mother to her. Following a hushed phone conversation, in which Sally revealed she was miserable having to live in her old house without her dad being there, Glen and a friend broke in to cause a bit of chaos, presumably to force Betty and Henry to consider moving away. Of course, Glen is probably the kind of kid who enjoys destroying things anyway so there’s a chance his motives might not be as decent as that, but he did stop short of Sally’s room leaving it untouched, apart from a small gift he left on her bed – I’m surprised that Betty, ever suspicious of her daughter’s actions, didn’t spot this and jump to conclusions about Sally’s involvement though.
Actually Marten Weiner shouldn’t really be singled out for praise as the child performances were pretty terrific all round this week, I can’t really comment on the rapidly growing baby Gene who presumably can now talk what with him asking Santa for ‘a fireman’ but hasn’t said a word in an episode yet, but Kiernan Shipka really has Sally’s defiant confusion down, and Jared Gilmore as Bobby v. 3 (who is now the only actor playing Bobby to survive into a second season) was adorably enthusiastic – as his excitement at finding the smashed eggs Glen had left in his bed demonstrated.
The third, and most unwelcome returning cast member was sleazy, slimy and psychotic Lucky Strike man Lee Garner Jr. whose grumblings to Roger about not being invited to the SCDP Christmas Party caused the whole office to go into crisis mode. Thankfully Joan was there to ensure the upgrading of the party – ‘from convalescent home to Roman orgy’ in Roger’s charming words – went smoothly. She had everything under control from knowing the delivery times for local restaurants, to knowing when to unleash the overexcited girls from the typing pool into the party, and even leading possibly the most glamorous conga line ever through the office, while handling Lee’s grabby advances a lot better than Sal did. Things still took a turn for the awkward though what with Lee using his clout around the office – which SCDP made no effort of hiding, what with them making the party all about him as everyone stopped what they were doing to greet him enthusiastically when he entered, and Lucky Strike packs were given out as gifts for employees, as well as Lee himself receiving a Polaroid camera from them – to force a clearly reluctant Roger into dressing as Santa, leading to a moment of near confrontation between the two as they held out to see who would give in first (obviously it wasn’t going to be Lee as he knows that he can get anything he wants from them, and he’s a big enough jerk to abuse this privilege). Still, crazy Lee did bring a bit of humour to the episode in a roundabout way – I enjoyed Harry’s one moment of being aware of something other than himself (his behaviour in Drs Atherton and Miller’s demonstration earlier on in the episode, where he grabbed at the provided cookies so as not to be seen as being a psychopath – despite Dr Miller clearly meaning it as a joke – was very much classic Harry Crane behaviour), offering as he did to Roger a stream of whispered ’sorry’s when Lee forced him to sit on Roger’s knee and pose for a photo, and Lee’s conga dancing was very flamboyant, as was his fur-lined coat. It was also a good excuse for some good old fashioned Nazi jokes, what with Don and Roger the next morning discussing the party to celebrate ‘The Führer’s birthday’.
On a side note, I found it interesting that Lee demanded to be invited to the Christmas party as he had heard stories about how wild Madison Avenue parties were meant to be, when SCDP is now located on The Avenue of the Americas, as we were shown on the envelope that Sally and Betty had sent to Don. Does this symbolise that this might in fact be the beginning of the end of the era of the Mad Men, or maybe it just shows how distant SCDP are from their contemporaries?
Despite the promises of romance with Nurse Phoebe or Doctor Miller, Don instead ended up bedding (or rather sofa-ing) his secretary Alison after the party, which didn’t go particularly well. Calling her when she was still at the party as he had forgotten his keys (which Joey summed up as being another example of Don being ‘pathetic’, suggesting that the newer employees of SCDP don’t share the same high level of esteem for Don that the more established characters do), Alison came round supposedly just for a little while to make sure he was ok, but ended up with them in a considerably more intimate position, which despite her initial reluctance was not entirely unappreciated by Alison. The next day however Don managed to once again show his amazing lack of sensitivity for other’s feelings by refusing to discuss what had happened the night before with the clearly smitten Alison, and instead handing her a nice but very formal Christmas card, with a $100 cash bonus inside (somehow I think a cheque would have been less offensive, I suppose because he would have to at least remember her name for that), essentially giving their night together an air of prostitution. Needless to say she was pretty devastated.
In fact love really wasn’t in the air during this episode. In addition to Don’s slip up, we also had the ongoing saga of Roger and Jane’s marriage to deal with, as well as Peggy’s new wet boyfriend Mark. Jane is clearly letting her new found superior standing in life go to her head – her confident, sophisticated, heavily tanned and made-up look at the Christmas party, possibly done in homage to Elizabeth Taylor, was a big contrast to the timid presence she had when we were introduced to her as Don’s struggling secretary in the last season. The fact that every time Roger has mentioned his wife this season it’s been in the form of a complaint – her demanding matchmaking for Don last week, the discussion with Freddy about the modern and minimalist office décor that she insisted on Roger having this week – does mean that we might soon be seeing their marriage enter a rocky patch.
While this was going on, Mark was whining at Peggy about her not letting him take things further physically as, like he pointed out, the Swedes have sex before marriage all the time. However, Peggy clearly knows that this is somewhat hypocritical – if she revealed her shameful secret about Pete’s baby to him he would ditch her in an instant – so she was left with the option of pretending to be much more virtuous than she really is. By the end of the episode though, and to the ironic strains of ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ (and cut between Alison determinately typing something, quite possibly a letter of resignation, following her perceived rejection from Don) she had relented and allowed Mark to bed her, with his supposedly caring, but really quite smug line of ‘Do you feel any different?’ ringing particularly hollow.
And on that cheerful note, that’s it for this week. See you all next time.
