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Mad Men Episode 5-13: The Phantom

Recap: Don nurses a toothache and spends much of the episode denying that he needs help. After spotting a worker at the office who looks remarkably like his brother, Adam, and after his toothache gets worse, Don eventually sees a dentist. When the dentist administers the anesthesia, Don hallucinates that Adam is performing the tooth extraction and warns Don that the rottenness that needs extracting is not his tooth. Afterwards, the actual dentist tells Don that he could have lost his entire jaw because he waited so long to have it taken care of.

Joan confides to Don that SCDP finances are in good shape, partly because Lane was insured for $175,000 with the company as the beneficiary. In an effort to do the right thing, Don orders Joan to write a check to Rebecca Pryce in the amount of $50,000, which was the amount of funds Lane was to have been reimbursed by SCDP within six years. Delivering the check to Rebecca personally, Don makes appropriate comments, such as, “I’m truly sorry for your loss,” but Rebecca is bitter and rejects his well-wishes. Instead, she accuses him of trying to make himself feel better and adds, “You had no right to fill a man like that with ambition.” 

Joan is in charge of potentially renting the floor above SCDP for the company to expand their offices. Rumors abound, and Harry confronts Joan about the rumors and requests a better office. Although Joan refuses to confirm the rumor to Harry, she brings the issue up at an executive board meeting, where everyone present is eager to expand their space. Realizing that Lane would have voiced objections to the expansion, Joan brings up a few objections in his place. Later, still thinking about Lane, she expresses regret to Don that she didn’t go ahead and give Lane “what he wanted” – a sexual relationship. Finally, she takes the SCDP execs upstairs to view the new space, and they all stand gazing outward, as if enchanted by the dream of expansion, or the dream of what wonderful things this new space could provide for them.

Seeking a temporary escape, Don goes to a movie and runs into Peggy, who is there alone “knocking off the cobwebs; someone told me it works.” Earlier, Peggy is told by her boss, Ted, to start smoking and then let him know, as a woman who smokes, what she wants – which may be why she needs to clear her head. Peggy and Don sit together to watch the movie after Don voices his mixed feelings toward her with, “I’m proud of you. I just didn’t know you’d do it without me.”

Back at SCDP, Mike and Stan give a presentation to the Topaz pantyhose executive. However, they use the terminology not cheap, which the client rejects. “We’re supposed to be part of a fantasy,” says the client. “A girl doesn’t think of cheap as a fantasy.” Don argues with the client that “not cheap” negates the concept of “cheap,” but the client disagrees.

Discouraged in her pursuit of acting roles, Megan lets Marie read a rejection letter she has received from a company that they decide is in the business of selling acting classes. Instead of encouraging Megan to try again, Marie suggests that Megan doesn’t have enough talent for an acting career, thus throwing her into serious self-doubt. Later, Megan learns from Emily, a friend from her acting class, that SCDP will be seeking an actress for a Beauty and the Beast ad campaign. Emily asks Megan to get her name and audition tape into consideration. Megan warns Emily that she can’t really help but she will try.  Emily kisses Megan and promises to be her “eternal slave” in return for the favor. Later, we see Megan asking Don for a chance of her own at the Beauty and the Beast part, with Don warning that she should try to succeed on her own, not because he helps her. Megan has a drunken melt-down at home, and when Don walks in to find her drunk, depressed, accusatory, and insulting, he advises her to sleep it off. Just then, Marie walks in and Don accuses Marie of not taking care of Megan. Marie retorts that taking care of Megan is his job, not hers.

In addition to trying to “help” Megan realize she’s not cut out to be an actress, and to “advise” Don that it is his role to care for his wife, Marie later “takes care” of Megan by telling her to “stop feeling sorry for yourself” and ends with, “You are an ungrateful little bitch.” Roger, however, finds Marie interesting and calls the Draper residence repeatedly, trying to reach her directly. Whenever Megan answers his calls, he hangs up on her. Finally, Don answers the phone and Roger, pretending to be Emil, is able to ask for Marie. Roger asks Marie to meet him at a hotel for dinner, but when Marie arrives, Roger immediately moves in for sex. However, he also lets her know that he wants to have a closer relationship and to take LSD with her. Marie just wants to have sex, and ultimately Roger decides to take LSD by himself after she leaves.

Pete’s experience in this episode is particularly dramatic. He first meets up with Howard and Beth on the commuter train, and when Pete asks where Beth is going, Beth urges Howard to move to the smoking car with her. At the office, Pete gets a phone call from Beth, who asks him to meet her for sex. Bitter and resentful because she refused his proposition in the past, Pete refuses until she offers him another puzzle piece to her life story: she is being hospitalized for electroshock therapy because of a suicide attempt, and this is not the first time; therefore, in the near future she might not remember who he is. Pete decides to meet her and they share an intimate afternoon, both seeming happy together, with Pete pulling her back to his embrace multiple times as she tries to leave. Beth realizes that they don’t really know each other, whereas Pete thinks they have something special together. 

At home, Pete observes and listens to Trudy’s plans to have a pool built in their back yard. Pete worries that Tammy might drown, and Trudy reacts by scolding him for his “doom and gloom” demeanor.

After Beth’s shock therapy, Pete goes to the hospital to visit her, claiming to be her brother so that he can be allowed in her room. Beth talks with him politely, but doesn’t appear to know who he is, so Pete pretends that he came to the wrong room. Still, Beth urges him to continue the conversation and listens to Pete talk about himself as if he were his “friend,” the one he supposedly came to visit. Later, Pete encounters Howard on the train and Howard invites Pete to get into trouble together, advising him to pretend to Trudy that he fell asleep on the train. Incensed, Pete says, “You just couldn’t wait to get her in the hospital to erase her brain!”

“So it’s you!” Howard yells. A fist fight ensues, and when the conductor and other bystanders pull the two apart, the conductor says he’s not surprised that Howard left his stuff at the bar. Next, he advises Pete to wait a moment and then go over and apologize to Howard, since they both ride the same train regularly. When Pete refuses and insults the conductor, the conductor punches Pete and forces him to get his things and get off the train at the next stop.

Pete sports a black eye and injuries to his face as he comes home to Trudy, who is feeding baby Tammy. Pete explains away his injuries by claiming he drove the car into a ditch, and Trudy, fully trusting him, reverses her earlier decision and assures Pete that they will go looking for an apartment for him in Manhattan so that he will no longer have to suffer from the long ride home at night. Ironically, Pete’s reason for wanting the Manhattan apartment was to have a relationship with Beth, and she no longer recognizes him.

Finally, Don takes the time to review Megan’s audition tape and she ends up getting the Beauty and the Beast role. After he sees her in costume on the little stage, he walks off the set in a detached mood and wanders away to a bar he frequented in the old days. There he sits, staring off with a drink in hand and looking a bit depressed. An attractive young woman asks him for a light and then mentions that her girlfriend at the end of the bar wonders whether he’s alone.

Lonesome? Obviously. But alone? We’ll have to wait until next season to witness whether, and in what ways, Don decides to reposition himself as “alone” to these or other women. New sexual adventures may happen again, but given that Season 5 has been full of surprising twists and turns, and given the amount of expanded awareness and growth through personal challenge that Don has experienced this season, I wouldn’t take it for granted that he simply reverts to the “old Don.” Moreover, I expect Don to continue to feel the reverberations of his hallucination of Adam and his feelings about both Adam and Lane’s suicides as he once again reinvents himself in Season 6.

As suggested by the title, a major theme of this episode is phantoms, as in ghosts or apparitions, unlikely fantasies, and misguided dreams.

·         Don spots a temporary employee at work who looks remarkably like his late brother, Adam; he calls out “Adam?” but the employee doesn’t respond. This man serves as a phantom in Don’s imagination.

·         While under anesthesia at the dentist’s office, Don dreams or hallucinates that his dentist is his brother, Adam, complete with the rope burn from his hanging; in Don’s hallucination, Adam warns Don that it isn’t really his tooth that’s rotten – challenging Don to sort out his past missteps and change his ways.

·         Don takes a good look at Megan in her audition tape and in her Beauty and the Beast costume onstage and realizes that, to him, she has been a fantasy or phantom image, and that the real Megan is not as easy to love.

·         Pete holds a romanticized fantasy image of Beth that inspires his passion; however, as Beth realizes before her shock treatment when Pete pays her a visit at the hospital, they really don’t know each other. Pete’s phantom image of their love falls apart after she suddenly doesn’t recognize him.

·         Beth tells Pete of her fantasy of the dark cloud that hangs over her following treatment, and of the appearance in her imagination of a door that she wants to pass through, presumably to die.

·         Pete makes up a phantom friend in an effort to excuse himself from Beth’s hospital room. When she asks him to stay and talk to her, he tells her about himself as if he were that phantom friend.

·         Pete tells Beth that his “friend” got sick from the complications of a love relationship and experienced a broken heart when the relationship went away; moreover, his “friend” then recognized a broader problem: that his family life was like some “temporary bandage on a permanent wound” – in other words, his family suddenly looks to Pete like an illusory, phantom solution to a deeper pain.

·         Beth advises Pete about his “friend,” “Don’t worry. They’ll fix him up here. They’re very good.” This shows that she believes in the fantasy that electroshock therapy makes everything fine again, even though she’s been treated repeatedly and her “blues” eventually return.

·         Trudy sees in Pete her fantasy of a loving husband that she feels close to, and she loves him for the man she fantasizes him to be.

·         On the train, Pete announces that he’s “the president of the Howdy Doody Circus Army,” as if the conductor’s title and credentials were equally ridiculous; with a smugly superior attitude, Pete reveals his far-fetched fantasy that, as a tax payer, he, not the conductor, should be in charge of who rides the train.

·         During the SCDP board meeting, Joan feels the presence of the ghost of Lane in his empty chair and gives voice to the objections she thinks he would mention regarding the office space expansion.

·         Megan chases the dream of being a working actress, which Marie warns is just a phantom dream.

·         Roger acts as a phantom caller when calling the Draper residence and hanging up all day long, until he finally hears Don’s voice and manages to get through to Marie.

·         By refusing to see a dentist, Don treats his “hot tooth” as a phantom toothache until he can no longer hang on to the fantasy that all problems eventually go away on their own.

·         Megan and her acting friends, Emily and Julia, share fantasy friendships; in reality, they are all out to compete for acting parts and will lie to each other about how good they are and how they will try to help each other.

·         Rebecca Pryce tells Don he only wants to help himself by his words of condolence and his $50,000 check to her, as if his gesture came out of a phantom belief that he cares about her at all. She also accuses Don of unfairly putting phantom ambition into Lane’s head.

·         Rebecca shows Don the photograph of a young woman that she found in Lane’s billfold and asks Don who it is. Ironically, this is the picture of a young woman who Lane dreamed of meeting but never did meet – a love phantom.

A related set of themes is the driving force of dreams and how different people behave when chasing dreams as well as when they have to give up their dreams. The lyrics to the final song, You Only Live Twice, begin: “You only live twice or so it seems/One life for yourself and one for your dreams.” Each character’s dream life drives his or her behavior to a large extent.

·         Megan promises to help her friend Emily get an acting role, and then forgets about her and tries for the role herself because of the pull of her own dreams. Her desire to be an actress drives her to use Don to get where she wants to go, even though this makes Don very uncomfortable.

·         SCDP execs chase the dream of expanding their offices, sparked by the dream of being more important big shots in their company and/or their industry.

·         The Topaz Pantyhose client understands that good advertising is based on creating desirable fantasies when he explains to the SCDP Creative group, “We’re supposed to be part of a fantasy; a girl doesn’t think of cheap as a fantasy.”

·         Roger chases the dream of understanding reality, or perhaps finding meaning in life, by doing LSD; so far, this hasn’t hurt anyone else and has helped him break up his façade of a marriage to Jane; in this episode, he is willing to take LSD alone and literally stand naked before the world, showing how far he will go to pursue this new dream of his.

·         Pete chases the dream of being handsome, loved, and admired by turning to Beth, a woman who barely knows him, thus betraying his wife and threatening the stability of his family.

·         Marie, whose dream of marital happiness with Emil went up in smoke long ago, does her best to destroy Megan’s acting dreams, perhaps as a result of jealousy. Marie’s scaled-down dreams now involve having sexual flings and maintaining her family relationships, without having to take care of anyone on either front.

·         Trudy, who has been pursuing her dreams of love, family, and life in the suburbs, has learned how to push Pete around to get what she wants; in the process, she has marginalized Pete’s dream of raising the family in Manhattan, and probably any other dream of his that conflicts with hers. Her self-focused pushes, combined with Pete’s acquiescent approach, will probably cause their marital dream to crumble sooner or later, although for now Trudy seems to believe she is living her dreams.

·         Rebecca’s dreams of love and a happy family, however out of touch with reality, were suddenly brought crashing down when Lane committed suicide; gone is her marriage to a man she thought she knew, and gone is his income, to which she has become accustomed. With the death of Lane, her dreams died. Consequently, she is now bitter and resentful even to those who attempt to offer her help, and like Marie, she seems to gain a sense of power in trying to make others feel as bad as she does.

·         Peggy’s main dream has been to build a solid career for herself and to find a love relationship with a man who respects her; in addition, she always dreamed of being mentored by Don (whether this was a figment of her imagination or an occasional reality); Don stokes the mentoring dream at the movie theater by telling her he’s proud of her success. Peggy, for the most part, is living her dreams in a way that doesn’t seem to hurt others.

·         Harry’s dream in this episode is to get a better office, one with a window and without a column in it. He pursues this dream by approaching Joan based on office rumors that SCDP plans to expand. As a result, he annoys Joan but may still get what he wants. Like Peggy, Harry is working toward living his dreams by setting achievable goals.

·         Beth’s scaled-back dream, after whatever big dreams died long ago, seems to be to feel better at any given moment; she pursues this by using Pete (and possibly others) for a false sense of intimacy at times, and also by getting electroshock therapy, which helps her feel good for a few months at a time.

·         Roger alludes to Lane’s suicide and speculates that, to commit suicide, you’d have to be sure you’re going to someplace better. Roger cannot trust what he considers phantom notions about the afterlife, but his dream is to access something real, perhaps some insight into life after death, through another LSD trip. He is hungry to get past the fantasies and illusions of love and be truly real – at least in small doses. Although Marie declines the invitation to take a trip with him, Roger decides to do LSD by himself.

·         Don’s dream of being a faithful husband and having a strong marriage with Megan begins to crumble as he gives up his fantasy of her and steps away from the “drama” in which she lives; as the season ends, he goes to a bar to try to nurse his disappointment with a drink and probably to reconnect with some of his old dreams, which in the future might put his marital dream in jeopardy.

A final set of themes is people having “the blues” and people denying their inner pain.

·         Don remains in denial of his toothache for quite a while because he believes that if you ignore something bad, it will go away; during his tooth extraction, he realizes that the toothache represents a much deeper problem, giving him “the blues.”

·         Joan still feels very “blue” about the loss of Lane.

·         Pete sees that his family life is like “a temporary bandage on a permanent wound” but has remained in denial of this fact for years, always trying to be a good husband and play by the rules (sometimes the girls’ rules, sometimes the boys’ rules); Pete ends this season deep into “the blues.”

·         Beth talks of having “the blues” so badly that she thinks of ending her life; she goes into denial through electroshock therapy, which she tells herself will “fix” her.

·         Marie seems mildly depressed due to her many years of a bad marriage, and she seems to live in denial of her unhappiness by acting cold and critical of others, having sexual flings without personal commitment, and handing out advice to others ask if she is far beyond them.

·         Rebecca is stunningly “blue,” but instead of expressing her pain honestly when Don expresses his condolences, she tries to make him feel responsible. Although she can’t deny her painful “blues,” she seems to deny the full force of her pain by trying to dump some of it onto Don.

·         Megan experiences “the blues” when she doubts her talent as an actress, gets drunk to drown out the pain to some extent, and lashes out at Don in an effort to dump some of her bad feelings onto him.

·         At the end of the episode, Don covers up his “blues” that come from his disappointment about Megan through drinking alcohol. The question remains: Will he also revert to his old habit of chasing women as another “temporary bandage” on his “permanent wound”?

Bye-bye, Mad Men. See you next year!

Mad Men Episode 5-12: Commissions and Fees

Recap: We first see Don, then Lane, receiving comments from outside the company because SCDP won the Jaguar account. Next, Scarlett, Joan’s replacement as executive board meeting secretary, attempts to lead the board meeting and Pete announces that Jaguar wants a new payment structure based on fees rather than commissions. When it is determined that a fee structure might provide less revenue for SCDP, Don votes no, Bert moves to “look into it,” and Joan seconds Bert’s motion.

Having opened and perused the company bank statement for the month in an effort to understand fees vs. commissions, Bert Cooper enters Don’s office and confronts him with the $50,000 bonus check made out to Lane that was actually forged by Lane. Believing Don to have signed the check, Bert scolds, “You can’t keep being ‘the good little boy’ while the adults run this business.” Don simply replies, “I’ll take care of it” rather than arguing with Bert. After Bert exits, Don calls Lane to his office and asks him, in private, to explain the check. Lane makes several rounds of argumentation, first claiming that Don is mistaken, and ultimately arguing that he earned the extra compensation and deserves to have it. Don explains that he cannot trust Lane any longer and gives Lane no choice but to resign. Feeling desperate, Lane attempts to change Don’s mind, but Don reminds Lane that, being guilty of embezzlement and forgery, he is fortunate to be given the chance to resign without anyone else on the board finding out, and without any legal action. Having compassion for Lane’s level of distress, though, Don advises him to reinvent himself.

Lane walks to the doorway of Joan’s office, apparently looking for a friend to talk to. Joan, oblivious of Lane’s situation, begins to ask him questions about where she might go for a vacation over the Easter holiday. Lane makes a comment about envisioning her “bouncing in the sand in some obscene bikini” and Joan replies with disgust, “I think you should take your party elsewhere.” Shut down, Lane walks to his office, where he stares out the window in despair, watching the snow fall.

When Lane goes home that night, Rebecca is dressed and ready to go out on the town. She looks radiant and makes a strong effort to be supportive of Lane and to emphasize what she thinks are his accomplishments. Unable to discuss his predicament, Lane allows himself to be pushed into going out, and in the garage, is confronted with a gift from Rebecca: a green Jaguar. He becomes violently ill and they return home. That night, seeing Rebecca sound asleep, Lane climbs out of bed and returns to the garage to commit suicide by plugging the exhaust pipe with a burnoose-looking scarf, running the car’s engine, and breathing the exhaust. This plan fails, as the Jaguar won’t start. Later, he goes to his office dressed in a three-piece suit, locks the door, types a letter of resignation, puts it in an envelope, and hangs himself.

On Friday at the Francis household, Betty tries to manage Sally and Bobby as she packs for a weekend trip to a ski resort. Bobby cooperates but Sally expresses her negative opinions bluntly, angering Betty. After accusing Sally of trying to spoil their weekend, Betty calls Don and lets him know she is having trouble with Sally. Offering him no choice in the matter, she says she will have Sally dropped off to stay with him over the weekend. When Sally shows up at the Draper residence, Megan is surprised to see her and angry that she assumes Don expects her to drop everything to take care of the girl. However, Megan ends up taking care of Sally, letting Sally tag along with her on a shopping trip with Megan’s friend Julia, and having a girls’ chat at a restaurant. On Monday morning, Megan auditions for an acting role, Don goes to the Dow Chemical meeting, and Sally is forced to miss school. She is supposed to stay home alone until Megan returns. Instead, Sally calls Glen and invites him to visit her, and Glen agrees to find a way to get from his private boarding school into the city to see her. They go to a museum together and talk about their lives. Glen admits being picked on at school and reveals that he told the boys he was going to have sex with Sally. Through their conversation they affirm verbally that their relationship is a brotherly-sisterly one, not a sexual one. Next, Sally goes to the rest room and discovers she is having her period for the first time. Stunned, she leaves the museum without Glen and goes home, where Betty finds her and spends some comforting time with her, trying to paint a positive picture of womanhood to help ease her menstrual pain. Still at the museum, Glen spends a lot of time looking around for Sally, who seems to have disappeared, and finally goes to the Draper residence to see if Sally is there. Megan and Don both talk to Glen, and Don offers to drive Glen home, almost two hours each way.  Betty calls Megan and lets her know Sally is with her. Glen confides in Don that life is bad, and Don asks Glen what he really wants. In the final scene, Don has allowed Glen to drive his car, giving him a chance to feel good about something.

In Roger’s office on Friday, Roger tells Don about his latest fling, a 25-year-old coat check girl, and laments the lack of a challenge in his recent love conquests. Applying this thinking to SCDP, Don says, “I’m tired of this piddling shi_. Pete thinks small.” After Don relates Ed Baxter’s “death sentence” of SCDP business because of Don’s anti-tobacco letter, Roger calls Ed Baxter a “wax figurine” and convinces Don that Ed is wrong, and that SCDP’s luck has changed for the better since the letter was published. Roger asks Don what he wants, and Don describes his new corporate vision with examples: “Instead of Mohawk, I want American Airlines; instead of Dunlop, I want Firestone.” Excited by Don’s thinking, Roger promises to get meetings with large companies, but Don insists on meeting with Ken’s father-in-law, Ed Baxter, at Dow Chemical. Roger confers with Ken about it, giving Ken no choice in the matter, and Ken responds by making a few demands. Roger gets a meeting on Monday for himself and Don, which leaves Don just two days to prepare a presentation. Don studies Dow advertisements all weekend, and in spite of having to take care of Sally and her friend Glen, he develops a rousing presentation that surprises Ed Baxter and his people at the Monday morning meeting.

On Monday morning at SCDP, Scarlett hands off the accounting books to Joan, saying that Mr. Pryce’s office has been locked all morning. Joan takes the books to Lane’s office and unlocks the door, but smells a stench and discovers a chair blocking the door. Unnerved, she goes next door and tells Ken, Pete, and Harry: “I think something’s terribly wrong in Mr. Pryce’s office. I can’t get the door open.” The men take turns peeking over the wall to the adjacent office, each of them seeing for himself Lane’s dead body hanging by the door. When Don and Roger return to SCDP after their meeting at Dow Chemical, they see Bert, Joan, and Pete sitting around a table looking stunned. Bert explains what happened, and Don insists on taking the body down immediately, rather than waiting until the coroner arrives. Everybody but Don wonders what happened to drive Lane to suicide, and Don, at least for the moment, keeps his knowledge to himself.

A major theme of this episode is people being backed into a corner, or forced into an unpleasant situation.

·         Jaguar executives force SCDP to accept a fee structure rather than the commission structure they expected.

·         Bert forces Don to become aware of and deal with the $50,000 holiday bonus check made out to Lane using his forged signature.

·         Don privately confronts Lane about forging his signature and embezzling money from the company and forces Lane to explain himself.

·         Don forces Lane to resign from SCDP.

·         Betty forces Sally to stay with her dad and Megan over the weekend.

·         Betty forces Don and Megan to look after Sally over the weekend, without giving them a choice.

·         Roger isolates Ken and offers him no choice about SCDP going after Dow Chemical, in spite of Ken’s request that they not do so, since Ken’s father-in-law is an executive.

·         In the same conversation, Ken threatens to expose Roger’s plans to his wife, which would get back to his father-in-law and spoil SCDP’s business opportunity, thereby forcing Roger to agree to his terms: to make it look like he’s forcing Ken onto the account, and to keep Pete off the account completely.

·         Roger, having set up a meeting with Ed Baxter at Dow Chemical, forces Don to scramble over the weekend to learn about the client’s advertising history and develop a brilliant presentation in just two days.

·         Sally, by leaving the museum without telling Glen, essentially forces Glen to spend a lot of time searching for her.

·         Rebecca forces (or tries to force) Lane to take her out for the evening.

·         Rebecca buys a car for Lane without consulting him, thus giving him no choice in the matter.

·         Ed Baxter at Dow forces Don and Roger to wait in the outer office for nearly two hours for their meeting.

·         By killing himself at the office, Lane forces the shut-down of the company for a day.

·         By committing suicide, Lane forces Rebecca to handle his debts, probably take their son out of private school, and face life alone.

A second theme is people rising to the occasion and living through their better nature.

·         In spite of the stress of needing to develop a brilliant Dow Chemical presentation over the weekend, Don considers Glen’s needs as a boy and is appropriately fatherly toward Glen, driving him all the way home and even granting him his wish of learning to drive, in an effort to help him feel hopeful about life.

·         In spite of needing time to rehearse for her Monday morning audition and wanting social time with her girlfriend Julia, Megan is motherly to Sally, including Sally in her conversations with Julia but also trying to control the conversation to give Sally hope about her “boyfriend” and protect her from Julia’s comments that are inappropriate for children.

·         In spite of her large burden of anger, which she frequently unleashes on Sally, Betty becomes motherly, warm, and patient toward Sally when thrust into the position of comforting her after she gets her first period. Further, Betty offers motherly, hopeful advice about what it means to be a woman.

·         Confronted with Sally’s disappearance, Glen shows a brotherly or masculine desire to look out for her and be sure she’s okay.

·         Instead of taking Bert’s insulting line personally (about being a good little boy while the adults run things) and arguing about it, Don handles Bert like an adult by reassuring him that he will accept full responsibility for the “holiday bonus check” situation.

·         Don considers Lane’s potential humiliation and tries to minimize it by confronting Lane privately about the forged check, and by not telling the others about Lane’s illegal behavior and not pressing charges.

·         Don considers SCDP’s best interests and does the right thing for the organization by holding Lane accountable for his illegal activity rather than giving in to Lane’s flattery and desperate pleas for another chance.

·         Don considers the constant struggles of SCDP and rises to the challenge by providing new leadership, expanding his vision of the company as an agency that serves large companies rather than smaller ones and communicating his vision to Roger.

·         Roger rises to the occasion when he learns why Don is depressed about the business because of the “death sentence” Ed Baxter gave him in the past about SCDP’s chances of future business in the big leagues; Roger becomes eloquently persuasive and a positive motivating force, convincing Don that things are already changing for the better since “the letter,” and assuring Don that he will support him by setting up any meeting Don wants in order to help him manifest his newly expanded corporate vision.

·         In spite of being confronted by Megan’s anger at not being told Sally would spend the weekend with them, Don refuses to take her anger personally and simply explains, “I had to fire Lane today.”

·         Instead of holding onto her anger because her weekend would be ruined, Megan adjusts to Don’s statement that he had to fire Lane by switching to her higher nature and behaving like an understanding, supportive wife.

·         Don and Megan each have times when they tell the other, “We’ll talk about it later” because they consider the children and know the conversations they need to have are not appropriate for children’s ears.

·         Sally and Glen each do their best to act grown up when at the museum, to consider each other’s feelings and needs, and to mind their manners, at least most of the time.

·         After Lane’s body is discovered, Bert Cooper considers the welfare of SCDP employees when he hides the truth from them about why they are sent home for the day.

·         Despite her desire to have her weekend as planned, Megan adjusts to the presence of Glen and takes care of him appropriately.

·         Megan and friend Julia try to give Sally specific, motherly advice about what a boyfriend is and isn’t.

·         Despite his abbreviated prep time, Don rises to the occasion of meeting with the Dow Chemical executives and provides an inspiring presentation that seems to jar their rigid mindset and crack open the door to future business with SCDP.

If the above theme represents people acting more mature than they often do, a third theme related to the second is the broader growth process. When a person rises to an occasion, his/her change is often limited to that occasion. However, sometimes the change is part of a genuine transformation or growth process.

·         Sally becomes a young woman and hears some of the wisdom about womanhood handed down by her elders.

·         Glen sports a moustache, deals with bullies, tells clever jokes to make a girl laugh, connects with an adult man who wants to help him (Don), and drives a car, all showing that he is growing up.

·         Don and Roger team up to grow the company by embracing a new, expanded corporate vision.

·         Ken shows significant growth in his ability to negotiate with the SCDP executives when he holds his own in hardball negotiations with Roger.

Lane’s decision to commit suicide makes this event the counterpoint to all three themes listed above. Lane has the opportunity to rise to the occasion and also grow significantly more honest after being caught in his illegal activities. To grow, he would have needed to level with Don, and later with his wife and family; to admit his mistakes; and to make amends. He could have made a fresh start in life, perhaps in a different location. Even if he wasn’t ready to admit all of his faults publicly, he could have left town, changed his behavior for the better, and experienced some growth.

Why did Lane choose to die? Lane valued his sense of dignity and couldn’t accept the humiliation he would have experienced if he had lived on. He seems to believe his mistakes were unforgivable and the humiliation was more than he could bear.  Thus, he decided he would rather die than face up to his mistakes. His avoidance of humiliation in an effort to maintain his dignity, however understandable, was his fatal flaw.

It appears that Lane felt cornered by Don and believed he was forced to commit suicide. In reality, he was not forced, since he had the option of growing, thus transforming himself into a better person. Unfortunately, he was overwhelmed by the first step in his growth process, which would have been very humiliating. By deciding not to engage in the growth process, which would have led him to develop tremendous courage to withstand the humiliation, his “need” to maintain his dignity was, in reality, a rationalization for remaining a coward.

Mad Men Episode 5-11: The Other Woman

Recap: This episode shows several characters making moves to get something they dearly want, even at a high cost, and often playing hardball to get it. The SCDP execs learn that Herb, an executive at Jaguar, will see that SCDP gets Jaguar’s business if they will arrange for Herb to spend a night with Joan. Don, wanting to protect Joan from this indignity and to show that Creative can win the account on its own merit, says no and insists that Jaguar doesn’t need Herb’s vote to make their final decision. Don walks out of the executive meeting and in his absence, the other four continue to discuss the proposal, ultimately being deemed by Pete to be “in agreement.”

With the goal of getting the Jaguar account at any cost, Pete meets with Joan and informs her of the situation, offending her further by suggesting that she will receive a large sum of money as compensation, like a prostitute. Pete instructs Lane to take out a loan to cover the cost. Lane, realizing he cannot do so because he recently sought a large loan that the rest of the execs don’t know about, and wanting desperately to keep his job and not get caught, approaches Joan and suggests that she should not ask for money but rather for 5% of the company profits along with full partner voting rights, thus ensuring her ability to earn enough money to raise her son in the coming years. Joan, humiliated to learn that all the partners heard about and discussed Herb’s indecent proposal, and repulsed by the idea of selling herself, yet wanting very much to be able to provide well for her son without Roger’s financial support, agrees to the arrangement and meets Herb at a hotel room to do the unsavory deed. Don later learns of the agreement of the other partners and makes an immediate trip to Joan’s apartment to tell her personally that she doesn’t have to do it; however, by that time, Joan has already returned from the sexual encounter. At Joan’s apartment, Don briefly meets Joan’s mother, Gail, but doesn’t know who she is.

Don’s pitch to Jaguar involves suggesting, but not saying directly, that men see a Jaguar as “the other woman” – expensive, beautiful, and fast, but risky, impractical, and impossible to control. His ad campaign, developed by Mike, was: “Jaguar – at last, something beautiful you can truly own.”

Meanwhile, Mike, Ken, and Harry are supposed to have a conference call with a potential client, Chevalier Blanc, but Mike is absent so Peggy sits in as his supervisor. When the client rejects the ad campaign Mike proposed, Peggy dreams up a similar but different concept involving Lady Godiva and the client loves it. After the trio informs Don of their successful phone call, Don assigns the work to Mike, not to Peggy, and insults Peggy for wanting to remain on the account by throwing money at her and telling her to go to Paris on her own if that’s what she wants. Clearly, Don has no idea what Peggy wants, which seems to involve respect for her work, seniority over Mike, and a closer mentoring relationship with Don. After Don’s insult, Ken comes to Peggy’s office to lend his support, but Peggy rejects his friendship and pact idea, saying, “Suddenly we all care about each other?”

On the personal front, Pete tells Trudy that, if SCDP gets the Jaguar account, he will have to get an apartment in Manhattan. However, Trudy is forceful in refusing to agree to that arrangement. Joan wants her mother, Gail, to get the refrigerator fixed by calling the married building super, Apollo, and it is revealed that Gail has had a heavy flirtation or an affair with him. Megan announces possible travel plans to Boston for three months if she gets the acting role she wants, and tells Don she hopes he will visit her on weekends. Don is shocked at this but agrees that, if she gets the part, she should take it. After Megan auditions for the part and gets a call-back, she looks uncomfortable when the three men assessing her at the call-back ask her to turn around, as if they were evaluating her body and not her acting talent. Although we don’t see the remainder of that meeting, we later see Megan telling Don that she didn’t get the part, and that if she has to choose between acting and Don, she will choose him but also hate him for it.

Gradually, Peggy realizes she will never get the respect and treatment from Don that she deeply longs for, so she has a coffee shop meeting with her old friend Freddy Rumson and seeks his advice. Freddy expresses confidence in her talent and advises her to move on to another company, adding that this is what Don would advise her to do, were he not involved. At the end of the episode, Peggy gives her notice to Don. Don offers her more money, but when she rejects the offer, Don kisses her hand and displays a sense of loss, feeling especially sorry for himself when he learns that his old rival Ted Chaough will be Peggy’s new boss. Peggy leaves the office just as the company celebrates the new Jaguar account, and she appears happy to be moving forward.

A prominent theme of this episode is men wanting to own and control women as “things” that can be bought (or at least rented), and being frustrated when they can’t do so.

·         Herb offers SCDP the promise of winning the Jaguar account if they will “rent” Joan to him so that he can control her for one night.

·         The SCDP execs offer Joan a good enough financial reward to give up her personal dignity in the interest of securing the Jaguar account. Ultimately, it’s her choice, but by offering her a 5% partnership, they, in return, give up total male control of SCDP, which is likely to frustrate them in the future.

·         Don tries to control Peggy by throwing money at her when she wants to be assigned to the Chevalier account, and later by offering her a raise when she gives notice that she’s leaving SCDP. He is visibly frustrated that she leaves anyway.

·         Don deeply wants to control Megan but also wants her to be happy; this puts him in the position of feeling frustrated with her when she says she may need to travel to Boston for several weeks. After Megan scolds him for underestimating her acting talent and potential for success, Don responds by yelling back at her, “Just keep doing whatever the hell you want!” – as if he feels insulted because he can’t control her.

·         Although it was just a faint suggestion, when asking Megan to turn around, the three men at the call-back audition appear to look at Megan as a potential “piece of meat” for their consumption, a meal they might be willing to pay a high price to enjoy; since Megan reports to Don that she didn’t get the part, it’s possible that she refused to prostitute herself to get it.

A second theme involves diverse loves that include the love of something other than a person, where a choice must be made.

·         At the presentation, Don paints a picture of men leafing through a Playboy magazine, passing up the images of flesh to gaze upon the image of a Jaguar, essentially preferring something beautiful they can own to something beautiful they’ll never completely own.

·         Megan loves Don but she also loves the theater; as she told Don late in the episode, if she had to choose between acting and him, she’d choose him but she’d hate him for it.

·         Pete loves Trudy and the family life, but he also has a love affair with Manhattan, which Trudy tries unsuccessfully to squelch.

·         Peggy loves working for Don, but she also loves her career and ultimately is forced to choose between the two; fortunately, she makes the growth-oriented choice.

·         Roger still loves Joan (probably), but he also loves getting new business and making money; ultimately he sadly and reluctantly goes along with offering Joan up to Herb in order to get the Jaguar account.

Finally, a pervasive theme is people misjudging the character of others. For example:

·         Kenny misjudges Peggy, not realizing that she has become cynical about office relationships thanks to Don’s mistreatment of her. When Ken tells her “I’ll get us both out of here,” Peggy rudely scolds, “You and your stupid pact; save the fiction for your stories.” Ken suddenly realizes that Peggy is not the person he thought she was, and he immediately leaves the room.

·         Peggy misjudges Ken, a true friend whose friendship and career alliance she rejects because she doesn’t believe he will be willing and/or able to come through with any meaningful help. Considering Kenny’s family connections and past behavior, she’s wrong about that.

·         Pete misjudges Joan when he first meets with her and asks her for advice on how to break it to the partners that they’re going to lose the Jaguar account simply because Herb “wants something very unorthodox.” His language shows that he thinks he can fool Joan, but she sees right through him and knows he’s asking her to sleep with Herb.

·         Joan misjudges Lane, mistaking him for an honest man when he informs her that all the other executives – Roger, Bert, Don, and Pete – are on-board for having her sleep with Herb.

·         Joan’s new depth of disgust for Roger (after Lane said they all voted for her to sleep with Herb) is another misjudgment because Roger was not really “for” the indecent arrangement.  When Pete shocks the executives with Herb’s proposal, Roger appears dismayed and says, “I hope you said no. She said she’d do it?” He correctly judges her to be someone who would not want to do that. Later in the conversation, seeing that everyone else was not standing strongly against it, Roger finally washes his hands of it by saying he wouldn’t stand in their way but he also wouldn’t pay for it. Pete, like a typical salesman, takes Roger’s words as a yes since it wasn’t an unequivocal no. However, Roger’s words and reactions show that he clearly was not in favor of it or he wouldn’t have added, “Don’t fool yourself; this is some very dirty business.”

·         Joan’s presumed cynical perception of Bert (after Lane said they all voted for her to sleep with Herb) is a misjudgment too, because Bert’s only comment was to emphasize that Joan should still have the option of saying no.

·         Joan’s cynical perception of Don (after Lane said they all voted for her to sleep with Herb) is a misjudgment that she later over-corrects when Don visits her apartment. What Don doesn’t express when telling Joan he was against having her sleep with Herb is that not only did he want to protect her, but he also felt confident and proud of his Creative department and believed they could win the business on their own merit. Therefore, when Joan caresses Don’s face and views him as “a good one,” she is seeing his good side as a gentleman but not seeing his self-important pride.

·         Don misjudges Joan and Pete when he believes Pete after Pete says, “It was her idea”; Don’s mistake is both believing Pete’s lie and flipping his judgment of Joan when he should have realized that Joan would not come up with such an idea.

·         Don misjudges Peggy when he offers her a raise, telling her he respects her for finally asking for it at the right time, when in fact what Peggy wants from him is what she always imagined they had in the past – a mentor/mentee or protégé/champion relationship.

·         Megan accuses Don of misjudging her acting talent. When she hears of his disapproving surprise about possibly traveling to Boston and staying there to rehearse for 8+ weeks, she says, “What did you think? That I would be a singing waitress? Perform in the laundry room?”

·         Don misjudges Joan when, upon leaving Joan’s apartment, he says, “Say goodnight to your friend” – suggesting that he may think Joan lives with a “girlfriend.”

·         Don misjudges Joan when he advises her not to sleep with Herb, not realizing that she is not an innocent girl simply being controlled by bad men and waiting for him to ride up on his “white horse” and rescue her, and that as an adult she is capable of looking after her own best interests by making difficult choices that she thinks will serve her family in the long term.  

·         Most importantly, Peggy misjudges both Don and Freddy Rumson by imagining she and Don have had a mentor/mentee relationship through the years. In season one it was Freddy Rumson who discovered Peggy’s talent (her “basket of kisses” comment for the Belle Jolie account) and who encouraged and mentored her. Don went along with Freddy’s recommendation, seeing that he could use Peggy’s talent to get back at Pete at the time, and took credit for being her “mentor” when it was Freddy who actually did much of the work of mentoring. In fact, through the years, Don has taken credit for her actual work whenever he felt it made him look good, something a real mentor doesn’t do. At the end of this episode, when Don tells Peggy, “Let’s pretend I’m not responsible for every good thing that’s ever happened to you,” she seems to totally buy-in to his words, as if Don had been doing anything but using Peggy to his own advantage all along. Even today, Freddy consistently encourages Peggy and points her in the direction of career growth, while Peggy fails to appreciate what an enormous role Freddy has played as a mentor and continues to play in her development, attributing it all to Don instead.