Mad Men Episode 6-7: The Man with a Plan

Recap: Riding the elevator, Don overhears the Rosens yelling at each other in their apartment. Sylvia accuses Arnold of being self-serving and not taking enough care of her, and Arnold threatens to leave. At the office, Dawn’s phone rings but Dawn isn’t at her desk, so Don decides to pick it up. It’s Sylvia, and she demands coyly that he come to meet her immediately. “I need you and nothing else will do” is her sex-talk. Don counters that she should meet him at a hotel around noon. He then steps in to an executive board meeting that includes execs from CGC and SCDP and takes the last available seat at the table. The board members discuss who is doing what and who they will fire – with Bert Peterson among the first to be axed. The execs find themselves being led by Jim Cutler. The meeting includes lots of competitiveness and blaming. Don is told to collaborate with Ted on the new Fleischman’s margarine account. It’s also decided that Ted, Don, and Pete will fly up to a client the following day, and Don learns that Ted pilots his own airplane.

Don leaves the office to meet Sylvia at the hotel and has her repeat her sex talk. Then Sylvia starts talking to Don about her problems with her son and husband, and how self-involved Arnold is. Don tells her she can talk about her son but he doesn’t want to hear her talk about her husband. Sylvia counters, “I can talk about whatever I want.” Don proceeds to command her to find his shoes for him, and she replies, “They’re right over there.” “Do it” says Don, and she fetches them for him. He then gives her a series of orders – take off the dress, get back in bed – and she decides for the moment to go along. Sylvia then gives him a command: “Come over here.” Don moves towards her but then picks up the hotel room key and leaves the room, saying, “Don’t go anywhere.” Sylvia does as told, but pulls out a book to have something besides sex to occupy her mind during the hours he’s gone.

After this escapade, Don shows up at work and walks into the meeting of creatives that he was supposed to co-lead along with Ted. Meanwhile, Ted has convened the meeting and led a brainstorming session on margarine for the Fleischman’s account. Ted scolds Don for being 40 minutes late. Silently rebuking Ted’s reprimand, Don walks into his office, shuts the door, and calls Sylvia at the hotel. He asks, “Are you still in bed?” and tells her she needs to wait there without knowing when he’ll be back. Sylvia replies, “What’s gotten into you?” but Don continues: “Don’t answer the phone again.” Later Don calls her room again, and she follows his instructions not to answer. Next Don grabs a bottle of booze and walks over to Ted’s office to offer an “olive branch” – but really to challenge Ted to a drinking man’s match as they spout ideas for the margarine commercial. Ted comes up with Gilligan’s Island analogies, which Don trashes. Don counters by describing a farm kitchen breakfast, which Ted amends with the addition of cows and bacon. By the time they have a concept to present to the creative group, Ted is ripped and all the creatives witness his drunkenness, much to Don’s satisfaction. Meanwhile, Don has a box from Saks Fifth Avenue delivered to Sylvia’s hotel room. Sylvia opens the box and puts on the red evening dress, assuming it means she and Don will be going out somewhere together. But when Don arrives at the hotel room, he says in a surly tone of voice, “Why would you think we’re going somewhere? You are here for me. You exist in this room for my pleasure.” Then he commands her to take off her clothes, and she obliges but is uneasy.

Back at work, Dawn is still absent or away from her desk, and Don opens his office door to find Peggy sitting there waiting for him (without knowing when he’d be back). She immediately reprimands him for getting Ted drunk, saying, “I hoped he’d rub off on you, not the other way around.” Don calls her a complainer and says, “He’s a grown man,” to which Peggy counters, “So are you. Move forward.”

Returning to the hotel room, Don hears Sylvia confide that she doesn’t feel like thinking about anything. “Who told you you were allowed to think?” he responds. Sylvia passively asks what she should do, and Don tells her he’s going on a trip upstate and she should stay in the room and be ready for him when he returns. Then he confiscates the book she’s reading, and she protests, “Come on!”

Back at work the following day, Don meets Ted, learns that Pete had some emergency, and agrees to go ahead with just Ted to the client in upstate New York, although he tries to postpone the flight because of a thunderstorm. Ted insists on leaving right away, and during the plane ride, Don looks frightened and pale until they soar above the storm clouds and reach fair weather. Ted tells him, "Sometimes when you're flying you think you're right side up, but you're really upside down. You've got to watch your instruments." Don says something to the effect of: “No matter what I say, you’re still the guy who flies his own plane.” He then pulls out the book he took from Sylvia and begins reading in an effort to marginalize Ted.

When Don eventually returns from the trip, Sylvia has snapped out of her mental fog and tells him their affair is over. Don says, “It’s over when I say it’s over,” but Sylvia replies that she had a dream in which Don died in a plane crash, Megan cried on her shoulder, and she went home to Arnold and made love to him. Don tries to reinterpret the dream and then begs her, but Sylvia says, “Let’s go.” As they exit the room, Don sees that Sylvia has left the red dress behind, and he realizes that his sexual fantasy of total dominance is over. Returning home to Megan, he tries to listen to her chatter about her plans for them to take some time off together and go on a trip, but his mind drifts off into a fog and he stops hearing what she’s saying. The trip they take is soon disrupted by the news of the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy, where Megan watches the news and cries in their hotel room while Don faces the other way and stares off. As the final credits roll, we hear the news report of RFK’s condition (still alive at that moment but weak) superimposed on a then-popular upbeat song with the lyrics: “I think it’s so groovy now, that people are finally getting together.”

For Ted’s part, he competes hard with Don by taking him up in his airplane in the middle of a thunderstorm for a very jerky flight, successfully unnerving him probably to get revenge for the previous day’s drinking match. Yet we also see Ted visiting his mentor Frank, the cancer-stricken partner from CGC, and we hear that Ted believes Don is mysterious and that, by comparison, he’s not interesting.

Joan’s story begins as she takes charge of organizing personnel on the first day of the merger, where the SCDP facilities are overcrowded as the CGC people file in to find out what room or desk to report to. She and Peggy exchange sincere well-wishes as she shows Peggy to her Copy Chief office, and Joan brushes off Moira, her own counterpart from CGC. Both Joan and Moira go to the executive board meeting, and Ted gives up his chair to Moira since the group is one chair short. As soon as Joan is able to get to her private office, she nurses a sharp pain in her side. Bob Benson knocks on her door and walks in to find her looking ill. He takes charge and allows her to lean on him as he ushers her out of the office and over to a clinic. Next he makes phone calls for her, sits in the waiting room with her, encourages her to stay positive when she worries about possibly dying, and finds a way to sweet-talk the nurse-administrator into expediting Joan’s case. Joan tells him he doesn’t have to stay there with her, but he replies, “I have no place to go.” After Joan has seen a doctor and gone home, Bob drops by for a visit, bearing a gift for Joan’s baby boy and wishing Joan well. Joan’s mother comments on Bob’s attractiveness but Joan explains to her that Bob is just concerned about his job, although Joan is visibly flattered by his gentlemanly attention. Back at the office, Joan sits at a pared-down executive board meeting in which Jim Cutler announces that Bob should be fired. Pete, Joan, and Don (who have all had positive interactions with him) look disturbed and manage to save his job.

Meanwhile, when Pete shows up to the executive board meeting on the first day of the merger, all the chairs are taken and he indignantly demands a seat. Moira volunteers her chair to him, which he takes, and that’s when Ted quickly offers his own seat to Moira. Pete’s self-righteous attitude helps to fan the flames of the meeting’s blame session. When he’s asked to travel with Don and Ted in Ted’s plane to see a client, he asserts his authority by recommending they make the trip the very next day, which the others agree to do. However, Pete soon gets a phone call about his mother and has to take time out to handle her wacky behavior and out-of-touch-with-reality demands. He learns that his brother, Bud, is dumping their mother on him, making Pete even angrier than he was at work. He tries to express to Bud his fear about potentially losing his job, but Bud’s decision is final. Both brothers agree their mom should be institutionalized but the paperwork will take time. The following day, Pete is sidetracked by his mother’s claim that there’s a fire at Pete’s apartment. Rushing home, he learns that there’s no fire and takes the approach of making up stories to confuse his mother even more, in order to quiet her down. Occupied with handling his mother’s mental confusion, he misses Ted’s flight and the client meeting he was to have with Don and Ted. When Pete’s secretary, Clara, later explains to him that the others left without him, Pete is enraged, dumps his anger on her, and tells her his mother can “go to hell,” although Clara takes his outburst in stride. At the end of the episode, Pete’s mother sees breaking news on TV of the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy. When she tells Pete about it, he assumes she’s disoriented and is talking about the assassination of JFK. She then tells him he’ll be late for school, reinforcing his mistaken assumption.

The irony of the episode’s title is that most of the men’s plans are unsuccessful. Don’s plan to dominate Sylvia (because he can’t dominate Megan) succeeds for a while but later turns her off to him permanently. Meanwhile, his plans to establish dominance at work are partially undermined by Ted, and even more so by Jim Cutler’s stronger leadership position, businesslike approach, and authoritative communication style. Ted’s plan to immediately dominate Don falls short, although Ted manages to get good advice from Frank on how to dominate in the long run by discerning Don’s weaknesses over time. Pete’s long-time plans to get Bud to take care of their mother suddenly fall through and he finds himself saddled with a responsibility that undermines his career efforts for the moment, although the brothers’ long-term plan of getting their mother committed will likely succeed. Meanwhile, Pete’s plan to establish his dominance at work by self-righteously yelling at everyone turns people off, and Clara treats him like he’s off-base, echoing the way he treats his mother. Bob Benson’s plan all along has been to ensure job security by building a network of strong personal relationships with key individuals at work. Bob seems to be “the man with a plan” when he quickly figures out how to help Joan, and his larger plan succeeds when his allies on the board save his job.

 

A major theme of this episode is forging new regimes. Power struggles in forging these regimes involve individuals pitted against one another to determine who will dominate whom and who will be ousted in the regime changes. These new regimes are formed by the merging of two agencies into one, the shift from old to new gender politics, and the shift from class-based master/servant relationships to greater democracy and equality, which are associated with both the Women’s Movement and the Civil Rights Movement of that era.

·         The most obvious regime change takes place as the two agencies merge to form the new company.

o   Don and Ted compete for dominance in the creative group, while the casual-looking SCDP creative team competes with the more inhibited, buttoned-up CGC creatives. Michael Ginsberg (“Now I see you’re my height”) attempts to position himself as equal to Ted, who quickly puts Ginsberg in his place (“I hope you can still look up to me”).

o   Moira (“I’ll need a copy of that”) challenges Joan’s dominance (“These are just notes”) as the office maven. Joan pointedly suggests to her that not everyone present on the first day of the merger will be there for long.

o   Some workers are cut immediately, and many more workers including Pete fear for their jobs. On day one, Roger fires Bert Peterson, whose work will be absorbed by Ken and Roger, partly because Roger feels competitive towards Bert and realizes his own position at the company is less secure, given that Jim Cutler is not easy to charm.

 

o   Bert Cooper has always been the sage of SCDP, but in this episode he sounds a bit weak as he reads aloud his incomplete letter. With the merger, he is naturally competing with the sage of CGC, Jim Cutler.

·         The next clear regime change is the shift in gender politics from old-school male domination to the rise of feminism. The old regime comprises both “male chauvinists” and the women who accommodate those men’s behavior. The new regime comprises women who take charge in non-traditional ways, along with men who work to be sensitive to women’s needs and respectful of their power, treating them more as equals.

o   Betty and Don’s marriage functioned according to their mutual belief in the old regime of male domination and fell apart because that regime includes a man’s right to cheat on his wife. Under Megan’s outspoken, direct-dealing influence, Don has been trying to shift with the times and become a more sensitive man. However, his secret longing for the old days when men believed women existed to serve the needs of men has led him to act out his fantasy of dominance with Sylvia. That ended when Sylvia stopped being servile.

o   As a fairly sensitive man, Ted tells Don, “Sometimes when you’re flying you think you’re right side up, but you’re really upside down. You’ve got to watch your instruments.” This quote has the ring of greater meaning, and is perhaps a coded message that Don is “flying upside down” in life and doesn’t know it.

 

o   Sylvia begins the episode as a fairly confident, self-assertive woman struggling for what she considers her rights within her marriage and getting what she can on the side. Surprised at Don’s behavior change in the hotel room, she plays along with him for the most part, until she fully understands what it is to be a sexual object, there to serve the pleasures of a man without reciprocity. At last she “wakes up” and finds her power as an equal human being, rejecting the old male-dominant regime by telling Don their affair is over and returning to the struggle for a more equal relationship with Arnold.

o   Bob Benson epitomizes the respectful, sensitive man that complements a woman who is confident in her own power and demands equality. Whether he’s being gentlemanly to Joan strictly to get ahead at work or whether deeper motivations drive his behavior, his respectfulness and sensitivity to her needs indicate his alignment with the new gender regime.

 

o   Pete’s behavior towards several women in the past, and Clara in this episode, indicate that he’s of the old regime that expects to be served by virtue of being a man. Interestingly, Pete came close to forming a respectful, sensitive, egalitarian relationship with Trudy in the early years of their marriage. Trudy played along with his self-important, male-dominant attitudes to some extent, despite her self-confidence, but that ended when she was faced with his cheating ways. Now, Clara is more bemused by Pete’s authoritarian rants than servile towards him, although she is still his secretary and therefore paid to serve him on the job. Overall, his continued alignment with the male-dominant regime of the past has given him some hot sex but undermined his long-term love relationships.

·         Another regime change that’s more subtle is the shift in society from the master/servant type of relationship (based both on gender and social class/wealth) to the view that servile people can stand up for themselves and just say no, pushing the conceited/arrogant people to mature by adopting a more egalitarian spirit, dropping their pretentiousness, and doing their own “grunt work.”

o   Dorothy, Pete’s mom, expects Pete to freshen her drink for her, as if she couldn’t or shouldn’t have to do it herself. Both Pete and Bud learned as children to adopt the master/servant lifestyle and to play along with their mother’s desire to be served, based on wealth and social status (although they plot to dump her in an institution as soon as possible). Dorothy also mentions to Pete that she’ll ask the cook to make a meal, indicating that she may not even know how to cook, or that she felt that cooking was beneath her.

 

o   Pete’s arrogance is supported by his beliefs, learned in childhood, in both male privilege and the entitlements of wealth and social status. With his high-status mother now mentally unstable, his marriage destroyed, and his job in question (at least in his mind), he’s terrified at the prospect of losing everything that supports his feelings of superiority.

 

o   Dawn’s absence from her desk drives Don to actually answer his own phone calls.

 

o   The spirit of democracy and egalitarianism (rather than the entitlements of the elite) is also represented by Bobby Kennedy, a man of great wealth and privilege who nevertheless stood up for treating poor people with greater fairness and compassion.

 

It’s interesting to watch the growth process, or lack thereof, in men in this episode. For instance, Peggy tells Don to move forward (which he doesn’t appreciate); Sylvia struggles to get Arnold to mature and stop being so childishly self-centered (which he resists); and Sylvia pushes Don to mature when she dumps him (which he doesn’t yet understand). Ted is fascinated by Don because he (Ted) is eager to grow by learning about Don’s mysterious creative process, and by figuring Don out as a person. Yet instead of being stimulated to grow by learning from and about Ted, Don tries to dominate and marginalize him. With their very different temperaments and styles of creative work – Don needs lots of time to think quietly until he comes up with great ads, whereas Ted uses a methodical approach to eventually come up with great ads – they’re well-positioned to spur one another’s professional growth if they both commit to growing rather than waging war. On the other hand, Don’s movement backwards instead of forwards on the gender front in his affair with Sylvia, attempting to recapture the old male-domination regime, ultimately makes him unattractive to her. In my view, the reason he’s still attractive to Megan is that when he’s with her, he’s trying to grow into a more sensitive man, thus meeting more of her needs and matching her commitment to growth.

Finally, the placing of the TV report of RFK’s shooting over the upbeat 60s song about “finally getting together” is a striking reminder of the contrary 1960s memes across America of women’s empowerment and a more inclusive and engaged democracy making demands for change, vs. right-wing reactionary forces attempting to stop these new movements from sweeping the country and altering the culture. This is reminiscent of today’s desperate, last-ditch efforts at control in America by people who, in politics and society, are insisting at all cost on the old-school regime of male dominance and the old-school entitlements of wealth that grant people the “right” to treat other people as inferior and as property – buyable and sellable, usable and “discardable” – rather than as full human beings worthy of equal respect and equal opportunities.

Mad Men Episode 6-6: For Immediate Release

Recap: Tempted by the idea of making themselves and the other partners rich and expanding the company, Pete, Bert, and Joan meet with a banker to discuss the possibility of SCDP going public. They wonder about how to get Don and Roger onboard when the deal is certain, agree that it won’t be a problem, and make plans to announce their news to the office the following day. Before that happens, the company loses two major clients and their hopes are crushed.

Roger is having an affair with Daisy, a flight attendant who works in the first-class airport lounge. Not only do they have fun in bed, but Roger has convinced her to tip him off to prospective clients at the airport and do other airline-related favors for him, which she seems to equally enjoy. Through Daisy, Roger manages to land a new account with “Mikey” and get an opportunity to present an ad campaign in Detroit for a new model of Chevrolet. Roger returns to SCDP and announces his new business just as things are falling apart due to lost accounts, and Don calls in his creative team with great excitement to develop the Chevy ad campaign. Roger feels he’s redeemed himself through his new account successes, and Don later gives him a nod for his accomplishments.

At CGC, the three principals meet for a creative discussion and Frank Gleason informs Ted that he has cancer, which in those days was a death sentence. Frank explains that Ted and Jim Cutler will have to buy him out, and that the company may go under now that they’ve dropped Alpha Romeo as a client, unless they can get the Chevy account. Later we see Ted in his office, trying to get his television to work so he can watch the sit-com Hazel when Peggy walks in to see what’s going on. Ted tells Peggy about Frank’s cancer, and Peggy responds to Ted’s worries about losing Frank’s “paint brush and his negativity” by telling him he’s strong. Ted kisses her, but then apologizes: “I’m sorry, I’m just grateful. Goodnight, Peggy.” Peggy seems to like Ted’s attention and his kiss, and later fantasizes about it when kissing Abe.

Peggy and Abe are now living in a home they bought in a changing neighborhood. While Abe tries to fix something electrical and shocks himself in the process, Peggy complains of a neighbor who’s a junkie and has pooped on the stairs. She later has a scarf wrapped around her nose and mouth and complains about paint fumes, noisy neighbors, and loud music. Abe explains that these inconveniences are all part of being in a changing neighborhood, but Peggy says she doesn’t like change. Abe replies: “I don’t think you understand, babe. Everything’s changing.” They then kiss, and that’s when Peggy fantasizes about kissing Ted.

Now at home with Trudy on a trial basis, Pete receives credit from Trudy for his good behavior but she isn’t yet ready to consummate their love again. Pete gets angry about the sexual rejection, threatens divorce, and hints that he’s going to be much more successful soon. She notes his statements but is resolute. Later, Pete and Bob Bensen visit a whorehouse and, standing in the hallway together, Bob offers to pay for Pete’s session. Suddenly Pete sees his father-in-law, Tom, exiting a bedroom with an African American prostitute, and they’re both stunned. Tom and Pete say hello to each other awkwardly. At the office, Pete asks Ken for advice on how to handle a hypothetical situation such as he had. Ken says it would be mutually destructive for either he or Tom to mention it, so he thinks Pete is safe.

Just then, Ken receives an urgent call from Jaguar, and Pete wonders why Ken is getting the call. They learn that Jaguar has been lost following a meeting between Don and Herb that Pete was excluded from. Pete storms out of Ken’s office and confronts Don with blame and bitterness. He says, “Do you know we had a public offering on the way?” Of course Don doesn’t know, since he was excluded from that interaction. Joan resents Don for not putting up with Herb, since she had to sleep with him just to get the account, and she tells him off (even though Don was the one executive who had advised her not to sleep with Herb). Everyone else appears angry with Don, but just then Roger steps in and announces that he has good news and bad news. The others cut him off and inform him that Jaguar is lost. Roger replies that, in that case, he has only good news: a new account and a shot at representing Chevrolet.

Later Pete goes to Tom’s office and tries to make amends, but Tom condemns Pete, saying: “My daughter is a princess,” and announces that Vicks will drop SCDP. To retaliate against Tom, Pete goes home to see Trudy and tells her bluntly that he saw her father at a mid-town whorehouse with “a 200-lb. negro prostitute,” which to Trudy’s ears sounds not just immoral but also freakish, given American society’s racial segregation and pervasive jokes about fat people in that era. Trudy tells Pete to get his things and go, but she’s unnerved by learning about this side of her father, whom she idealizes as much as he idealizes her.

Marie is at Don and Megan’s for a Mother’s Day visit. As the three of them chat around the kitchen bar, Arnold drops by and mentions that their son, Mitchell, is visiting them for Mother’s Day. Marie gets Arnold in her gaze and behaves seductively, and Arnold takes notice. Don asks: “How long is she staying?” but doesn’t get a firm response. Later, Megan and Marie enter an elevator where two young women recognize Megan and ask for her autograph, which irritates Marie. At work, Don hears from Pete that the dinner meeting with Herb is cancelled, but shortly thereafter Roger tells him that the meeting is on, without Pete – but with wives, to “limit the explosion.” Back at home, Megan confesses to Marie that she’s worried about Don because he’s so distant, and Marie advises that it’s very hard to stand next to someone giving an autograph. “He thinks you belong more to the public than to him.” She also advises Megan to dress hot so that Don will want to have sex, and Megan does exactly that.

Don, Megan, and Marie attend the dinner that Roger arranged with Herb and his wife, a ditzy blonde who chats about mundane experiences as if they were fascinating. Bored silly, the others want to leave, but they wait for Roger (who was to be paired with Marie). Roger never shows up, and eventually, the ladies all go to the ladies’ room and leave Herb and Don to talk business. Herb tells Don that he has a “kid” whom he wants to supervise Don’s creative process, and Don hands Herb the business card of another SCDP person who, he says, will be in charge of the Jaguar account from now on. This leads to a huge stand-off, and Don dumps Jaguar. When the ladies return to their table, the Draper party files out of the restaurant, leaving Herb and wife to dine alone together.

Back at home, Marie sits in the living room while Don and Megan have sex in the bedroom. The phone rings, Marie picks it up, and it’s Roger. Marie is offended that Roger didn’t show up for the dinner, and despite his attempts to salvage the relationship, she tells him to forget her name.

Later, Don meets Arnold in the elevator of their building, and Arnold, looking wasted, asks Don to come out and celebrate with him because he just quit his job. Arnold says he lost a heart patient and the opportunity to perform the first heart transplant was granted to another hospital. Filled with self-pity, Arnold says, “Fate hasn’t chosen me.” Replying: “I don’t believe in fate. You make your own opportunities,” Don refuses the pity-party invitation, saying he has too much work to do. When Don gets home, Megan approaches him seductively, calls him “fearless” in a way that Don feels awkward about, and performs unrequested sexual favors.

The next day, Don and Roger are at the airport lounge where Daisy works. Sitting nearby are a number of people from a competing agency, all traveling to Detroit on the same flight, and they needle Roger and Don for losing Vicks, which is a surprise to them. They immediately call the office to find out what happened to the Vicks account, and Daisy promises to “lose” the other agency’s luggage. Once Don and Roger arrive in Detroit, Don finds himself unable to sleep in his hotel room and goes to the bar, where Ted Chaough shows up and says: “Damn it” to him. Although Don feels harassed, he eventually listens to Ted’s insights and realizes that CGC and SCDP are in the same position: two small agencies with great creative ideas that will be stolen by the big agencies, one of which will get the business. Don gets the idea of combining their agencies to become one big agency, and the two of them spend the night working on a joint campaign that wins the business. When they return home, Ted calls Peggy into his office. Anticipating an possible encounter with Ted, she’s surprised to walk in and see Don sitting there. She learns that the two agencies are merging, although the other partners may not know it yet, and she’s poised to become the copy chief of one of the 25 largest ad agencies in the country. They then tell her to write a press release announcing this merger, and to invent a suitable name for their new agency, “the agency you want to work for.”

 

A primary theme of this episode is Abe’s statement that everything’s changing. Specifically, SCDP is changing for the better by building strong new relationships or alliances and dropping weak ones, often explosively. Although much of the episode involves building the business via new alliances, the same process takes place in some personal relationships. Some of the strongest alliances and biggest explosions involve relationships that combine the personal and the professional realms.

·         Pete, Bert, and Joan form a temporary alliance to try to expand the business by taking it public. Their idea proves to be built on a weak assumption that all their current business is secure, and their plan explodes when they learn that Jaguar is lost.

 

·         Roger forms a relationship/business alliance with Daisy that proves strong in enabling him to secure new business contacts that yield big results. Meanwhile, Roger drops his interest in Marie, since he had previously asked Marie for a more meaningful relationship than just sex (he wanted to do LSD with her) and she rejected the notion. In this episode Roger tries to salvage his relationship with Marie, but she hangs up on him with explosive anger when she realizes her sexual wiles don’t really fascinate him as much as she imagined. With Daisy, he has good sex and a deeper relationship, one where they both mix business with pleasure and where Roger feels he’s in charge and getting what he asks for from her.  

 

·         The alliance of Cutler, Gleason and Chaough seems to be in jeopardy due to Frank’s cancer diagnosis. Amazingly, Ted manages to reverse this fate by forging a new alliance with Don Draper and, presumably, expand the business dramatically, although we will have to wait and see whether this comes to pass.

·         Ted forms a personal relationship with Peggy on very shaky grounds by kissing her at work. This does nothing for the company’s business, and we’ll have to wait and see if this intimacy goes further. Generally though, Ted has contributed significantly to Peggy’s career growth, and in this episode we see Peggy try to boost his morale (professionally) by telling him he’s strong. Their mutual growth orientation at work creates a solid foundation for their professional relationship, which helps each of their careers as well as CGC.

·         Peggy and Abe’s relationship hits a rough patch, and it remains to be seen whether it will survive. Abe has always been the leader in driving Peggy’s personal growth (while encouraging her professional growth too), but Peggy has to want to continue stretching and growing on a personal level for the relationship to endure.

·         Early in the episode, Pete and Trudy try to strengthen their marriage, and Trudy has allowed him to return home on a probationary status. Later, the marriage explodes because it was built on a foundation of Pete’s lies that are exposed during this episode, and a foundation of inequality – with Trudy having enormous personal power (strong self-knowledge, strong boundaries, strong principles) and Pete unable to match her. 

·         Pete and Bob Bensen now have a new alliance that spans business and personal life. No longer on the outside socially, Bob has managed to position himself as more of a friend to Pete, and is currently trying to position himself as a benefactor by offering to pay for Pete’s prostitution session. Regardless of whether this will serve SCDP in expanding their business, Bob is clearly focused on using this alliance for his own advancement in the company.

 

·         Pete’s relationship with Tom has always been based on their mutual love of Trudy. Now that Tom realizes Pete has cheated on Trudy, Tom “explodes” his relationship with Pete by telling him he will have his company drop SCDP, and he should get out of his office or be physically pushed out. It’s fitting that the SCDP-Vicks alliance should be dropped, though, as it was built on the arguably weak foundation of personal favors owed between in-laws. Since Pete is losing Trudy, he wants Tom to lose her, too, so he tells Trudy about seeing Tom at the whorehouse –  despite the fact that this encounter destroys his chances of reconciling his marriage. This revelation not only causes Trudy to explode with anger at Pete, but it causes her whole belief system about her father to begin to fall apart, undermining her core beliefs about men and marriage.

·         Pete and Joan both explode with anger at Don when they learn that he has jettisoned the Jaguar account. Others are equally angry until Roger pops in and brings his good news of new business around the corner. Since Pete’s anger towards Don is almost comical (considering that Pete lost the Vicks account), and since Joan’s anger towards Don is misplaced (considering that Don was against the idea of asking her to sleep with Herb), their anger is based on confusion at best. 

·         Don and Herb end their business relationship with an explosive meeting. Although Don doesn’t know it at the time, this helps to move the company forward, since Don would have to drop Jaguar anyway in order to be able to compete for the Chevy business.  

·         Arnold ends his career as a heart surgeon, at least at his current hospital, by quitting his job after he loses a patient and the opportunity to perform the first-ever heart transplant. This is devastating to Arnold, whose ego seems to have exploded when he says “Fate hasn’t chosen me.” Don also feels the blow, as he now has to face the prospect of not knowing if or when Sylvia will be available to him again or whether the Rosens might even move out of NYC.

·         Megan tries to be a knock-out sexually, and she manages to get Don’s attention and create some sexual explosions. However, their relationship, which originally started out with Megan offering Don “no strings attached” sex, has reached a deeper level and then devolved back to being based more on hot sex than mutual growth. By the time they got married, Megan was driving Don’s growth both personally and professionally, while Don was driving Megan’s professional growth at SCDP. This made the relationship outstandingly passionate for Don, but a little less so for Megan because she felt no career fulfillment at SCDP. The marriage lost quite a bit of its excitement for Don when Megan left the company and went into acting, because she was no longer part of his business life and therefore no longer inspiring his career growth, although she continues to challenge him to grow personally. Unfortunately for Megan, her insights into Don cannot match the insights that Sylvia offers, as Sylvia sees more deeply into Don and is now driving his most critical points of growth (by identifying his need for inner peace), which he finds deeply exciting.

Another theme is the emotional rollercoaster of contradictory events, including several plot twists and personal reversals.  

·         Bert, Joan, and Pete have great excitement and high hopes about plans to take SCDP public. These hopes are crushed early in the episode, bringing anger and disappointment.

·         Ted and his partners at CGC are brought down emotionally when Ted learns about Frank’s cancer diagnosis, although he tries to lift Frank’s dark mood. The executives also discuss the possible folding of their company, which brings feelings of worry and concern. After Ted shares this information with Peggy and his concern about losing Frank, she tells him he’s strong, which causes him to feel excited enough to kiss her, giving them both a temporary thrill. Next, Ted feels bad and apologizes to her.

 

·         Peggy rides an emotional roller coaster on a personal level, between her relationship with Abe that provides too many annoyances, her feelings of disgust about the social environment surrounding her home, and her relationship with Ted that secretly sparks her sense of feeling appreciated and loved. Not knowing what will happen next with Ted spurs her fantasies and imagination, which at the end of the episode are suddenly interrupted and brought down to earth when she sees Don in Ted’s office and realizes Ted is not going to seduce her at the moment. However, she is then asked to imagine being the copy chief at the company of her dreams, bringing her emotional roller coaster back up to the top of the next hill.

 

·         Arnold rides an emotional roller coaster by imagining himself to be the first heart surgeon in the world to perform a heart transplant, then losing his patient, and then quitting his job because he realizes his dream will never come true. He thus rides from the heights of egotism to the depths of tremendous self-pity.

 

·         Megan’s emotional rollercoaster has to do with worrying about Don being so distant (which she knows is a threat to the foundation of their marriage), and then trying hard to please and excite him sexually, but still knowing that she hasn’t really reached him.  She also experiences the usual emotional ups and downs around her mother.

 

·         The dinner with Don, Megan, Marie, and Herb and his wife involve pleasantries, excitement on the part of Herb’s wife who was excited about every little thing, boredom on the part of the others, worry about why Roger wasn’t there yet, explosiveness between Don and Herb, and then confusion among the women who were led by Don to leave before dinner started.

 

·         When several people at SCDP learn about losing Jaguar, emotions of anger and fear sweep the office, only to be reversed to a new wave of high hopes when Roger announces his new account through Mikey and a meeting with the “big guys” – Chevy. Don rides the wave of excitement while developing a great ad campaign, only to have his hopes dashed by Ted when Ted explains to him that the small size of their agencies will exclude them from winning the business. Ted and Don’s anger and depression then give birth to new high hopes when they realize they have a chance at the business through merging their companies, and this strategy brings success and emotional elation for everyone concerned within their two agencies, spreading to Peggy at the end of the episode.  

 

·         Trudy’s emotional rollercoaster begins with hopes that her marriage may succeed after all, if Pete continues his good behavior, and ends with her explosive anger at Pete as well as her feelings of shock, disgust, and disorientation when she learns about her father’s whorehouse activity.

 

·         Pete’s emotional rollercoaster involves hopefulness, anger, shock, and retaliation with Trudy; sexual desire towards his hooker; friendship towards Bob; shock, worry, anger, hope of reconciliation, and revenge in his relationship with Tom; self-righteous anger and feelings of betraying towards Don; hopes of getting rich and crushing anger at having those plans undermined; an uneasy alliance with Ken; and great bitterness overall.

 

·         Don’s emotional rollercoaster begins on a down note when he hears that Arnold and Sylvia’s son is visiting, which to him means she won’t be available to him for an undetermined length of time. This problem is later exacerbated when Don learns that Arnold has quit his job, which to Don means that Arnold may be at home too, making Sylvia even less available to him. At work Don is faced with a meeting with Herb, a man he dislikes, but the meeting enables him to tell Herb off and dump his business, which Don ultimately finds refreshing and helps him feel better. However, the office turns against Don, which must not have felt good, until Roger walks in and brings Don’s mood up again with his news of the Chevy meeting to come. At the airport, Don and Roger face harassment by a competing agency, and in Detroit Don feels restless and goes to the bar where he is met by Ted, who he feels is harassing him. Through their conversation, Don begins to realize that Ted is not his enemy and in fact could become an ally. This sends Don into a new cycle of excitement that is sustained when Don and Ted win the business and decide to merge agencies. Don also experiences up and down emotions around Megan, including probably guilt, sexual interest, and awkwardness when Megan comes on to him at a time when he isn’t really in the mood.

 

Finally, a couple of fun hypocrisies are Pete blaming Don for losing Jaguar, when he loses Vicks, and Tom condemning Pete for cheating on his wife with a whore while he’s cheating on his own wife at the same whorehouse. All in all, another great episode.

Mad Men Episode 6-5: The Flood

Recap: Peggy meets a real estate agent, Ginny, at an apartment she’s considering on the east side of Manhattan. Abe shows up after a few minutes but says little. The agent, using typical sales clichés, counters their objection that it’s too far east. The agent’s advice changes (“go in high,” then “go in low”) and Peggy later loses the option to buy. Disappointed, she feels Abe should be paying more attention to her because of her loss, but Abe is busy writing a news article. Abe reveals that he hopes they can raise their children in a more diverse neighborhood. Showing a variety of emotions in rapid succession, Peggy seems ultimately pleased to hear his point of view, reassuring him that he’s important in her life. Abe quickly returns his attention to his writing.

Don and Megan happen to meet Arnold and Sylvia in the lobby of their building and stop to chat. The Rosens are off to Washington, D.C. where Arnold was invited to deliver a keynote address. Don and Megan are on their way to the Ad Club of New York awards banquet, where Megan is part of a team up for an award. Don is flustered and forgets where Arnold said they were going. He asks him again, and Arnold makes a joke of Don’s forgetfulness.

Before the start of the awards banquet, Megan spots Peggy across the room and goes over to say hello. Peggy talks to her about the apartment she’s looking at, and Megan encourages her. At the CGC table, Ted ignores his wife and makes conversation and eye contact with Peggy instead.

Midway through the banquet during Paul Newman’s speech (where he endorses Eugene McCarthy for president), somebody shouts that Martin Luther King, Jr. has been killed, and people around the room are upset. After a brief break, the awards banquet resumes. Abe excitedly tells Peggy he’s leaving to partner with a New York Times photographer to cover a story about the riots in Harlem. Don offers to give Peggy a ride home.

At home, Don sees the ongoing news coverage of the riots and hears that there are riots in Washington D.C., with three people dead. Meanwhile, Megan talks to her father on the phone and is disgusted with his “Marxist bullshit” position that he “applauds the escalation of [capitalist society’s] decay.” She says angrily that he “hides behind his intellect” and doesn’t want to feel his emotions. Don later places a phone call to the hotel where the Rosens are staying, concerned about their safety, but then declines to leave a message. Later, after some confusion about whether the office should remain open for the day or close early, Don attends a 3:00 meeting with Roger and an insurance man named Randall. Randall’s bizarre behavior, communications, and advertising idea cause Don and Roger to stare in response, and Don tells Randall his idea is in poor taste. Randall’s final comment is strikingly meaningful and coherent, if disconnected to everything else he’s said: “This is an opportunity. The heavens are telling us to change.” After the meeting, Roger explains to Don: “He talked me off a roof once; I kind of owe him.”

At Betty and Henry’s place, Betty hears the news of the assassination and at first decides to keep the television off to protect the children, although later she keeps the TV on even when she’s not in the room because she feels she should. Henry tells her: “They’re going to burn down the city. I have to go help the mayor.” Later, she discovers that Bobby is picking at the wallpaper behind his bed, disturbed that it isn’t matched up. She confronts him and Bobby denies everything. She then accuses him of trying to destroy the house, but postpones dealing with his misbehavior because of all the activities of the day. Henry complains to Betty about Mayor Lindsay: “He smiled like he was going to a pancake breakfast.” Later he says: “I keep thinking about walking through Harlem – Lindsay with his big smile and the rest of us a few steps behind…I keep thinking I would do it differently.” Then he tells Betty he’s considering a run for the state senate, that he’s leaving his job, and that she’ll never have to worry about money. Betty tells him she’s always wanted him to run for office. He ends with: “I can’t wait for people to meet you – really meet you.” After this conversation, Betty spends time looking wistfully at her reflection in the mirror, holding up a beautiful dress that is now several sizes too small for her.

At Don’s place, Betty calls and demands that he come and pick up the children. Don says: “I don’t believe this!” but when Betty insists, he caves in and ends up driving his three children through fiery streets to bring them to his apartment. There Megan makes plans to take the children to a vigil in the park. Bobby fakes feeling sick so he doesn’t have to go, and Don agrees to watch Bobby. When Don learns that Bobby is not allowed to watch TV for a week (Betty’s punishment for the wallpaper situation), Don takes him to the movies instead, to spend some time with him and to make up for what he perceives as Betty’s harshness. After they see Planet of the Apes (a movie showing the destruction of America), Bobby seems confused about the story and Don tells him they can stay and watch it again. Bobby speaks to the usher and expresses a philosophical opinion about why people attend movies.

Don goes to his bedroom and Megan, who has just gotten the kids to bed, finds him there drinking alcohol. She confronts him with: “You don’t have Marx, you have a bottle. Is this really what you want to be to them?” Don launches into a lengthy reflection about fatherhood, placing his experience in generalized terms: you want to love your children, but at first you don’t – especially if you’ve had a difficult childhood. You wonder if your own father felt that way about you. Then when your children get older, something they do may trigger an emotional connection and you suddenly feel the love “like your heart is going to explode.”  Later, Don peeks in on Bobby and sees that he’s wide awake. Don climbs in bed with him and asks him what’s wrong. Bobby, knowing that MLK has been shot, worries that Henry might get shot too. Don tells him, “Henry’s not that important…Go to sleep.” Then Don walks out to his balcony for a smoke and listens to the sound of the police, fire, and ambulance sirens.

Michael’s father arranges a date for Michael with the daughter of a man he plays chess with. She is Beverly Farber, a school teacher. He arranges this behind Michael’s back, hands him money, and tells him to go out with her immediately. Michael ends up taking Beverly to a modest restaurant and has an awkward conversation where he is too direct and says all the wrong things (including asking whether she likes children and insisting that he’s never had sex). Beverly is understanding and reassuring. She tells him (not to insult him but rather to take the pressure off) that she agreed to go on this date only as a favor to her parents. They then hear a radio announcement about the assassination and end their date early. On Saturday, Michael’s father gets up to go to work, although he doesn’t normally work on Saturdays, just to get away from the news. Michael gives him a shirt that he’s just mended, but his father lashes out: “You can’t sew, cook, or clean. Don’t you think there’s a reason you have all these flaws? You need a girl.” He says that when a catastrophe occurs, it’s exactly the time that a man and woman need to be together. “In the flood, the animals went two by two…Don’t you like girls?”

Back at the awards banquet, Pete is visibly angry because he can’t get to a phone. Once able to place a call, he calls Trudy to make sure she and Tammy are okay. He says he doesn’t want them to be alone, and he wants to see Tammy. Trudy is temporarily touched and drawn into the conversation, but eventually she shuts down her emotions and ends the call. Pete encounters Harry at the banquet and starts an argument. Bert Cooper overhears them and insists that they shake hands with one another, but after they do, they continue arguing. Harry expresses concern for what the social events will do to business, and Pete thinks Harry is shameful and a racist. Harry says, “Excuse me. I mistook this for a work day.” Later at his apartment, Pete has food delivered to his door and tries to converse with the delivery man. The man looks at him but doesn’t speak.

At the SCDP office following the assassination, several secretaries fail to show up for work, and Don and Joan are concerned about Dawn. However, Dawn has gone to see Peggy after spending the weekend in Newark with her aunt. Peggy hugs Dawn and they both seem to connect emotionally. Dawn says: “I knew it was going to happen” and is angry about “these fools running in the streets” doing exactly what MLK didn’t want people to do – be violent. Later, Dawn shows up at SCDP and both Don and Joan show empathy. Joan hugs her and says: “We’re all so sorry,” but Dawn is alienated and doesn’t hug her back. They try to send her home for the day, but Dawn says: “My mother thought I should come in. I’d really rather be here today.”

The episode ends with the song, Love is Blue. The lyrics to this song are about the colors (emotions) involved in losing a love relationship. This reminds us of Pete’s emotions around Trudy, Don’s emotions about being separated from Sylvia for the weekend, and many people’s personal feelings of loss after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

A major theme of this episode is a flood of emotions, often leading to emotionally-driven and illogical behavior.

·         When King is assassinated, thousands of people become overwhelmed with feelings of anger and rage and start looting and destroying property, even burning up their own neighborhoods, in direct contradiction to King’s teachings of nonviolence.

 

·         When Peggy looks to buy a home on the east side of Manhattan, Abe doesn’t comment much. But when Peggy learns she’s lost the option to buy it, she feels deeply disappointed and also upset because Abe isn’t tending to her emotions. After Peggy learns that Abe is hoping they will raise their children in a more diverse neighborhood, she experiences a flood of various emotions as she absorbs his message. However, these emotions lead her to clarity, not illogical behavior.

 

·         Peggy assures Abe that he’s an important part of her life and therefore she wants to know his opinions, but as she’s delivering this heavy message, he quickly flips back to his flood of excitement over the article he’s writing and the momentous news of the day, blowing her off to some extent – not something he would normally do if he weren’t overwhelmed by his own excitement.   

·         The Drapers run into the Rosens in their building lobby and chat about their respective plans for the evening/weekend. Don is overcome with emotions about Sylvia and so forgets where Arnold said they were going for the weekend. Arnold repeats “D.C.” and later ribs Don about his confusion, caused by Don’s inability to think as clearly as usual.

·         At the banquet, Ted is overwhelmed with emotions about Peggy and acts foolishly attentive to her – not a bright move for an otherwise bright guy, considering that his wife not only feels under-attended-to but also can see who her husband is paying attention to.

·         Later at the banquet, somebody shouts that Martin Luther King, Jr. has been killed. The speaker says they had planned to wait until the awards banquet ended to make that announcement, but whoever shouted the news was obviously overcome with emotion and therefore behaved in a rash way, upsetting the evening’s flow of activities.  

·         Abe is so carried away with excitement about the chance to work with a New York Times photographer to cover the riots that he rushes off from the banquet and leaves Peggy alone without a thought as to how she’ll get home. Peggy is an independent woman, so this may not be a big deal, but it appears to make her feel a little more overwhelmed at the time.  

·         Afraid for Sylvia’s (and maybe Arnold’s) safety, Don places a call to their hotel in Washington, D.C. without thinking through what he wants to say. When he’s unable to reach them, he realizes his call doesn’t really make sense, so he doesn’t leave a message.

·         Roger feels a soft spot for Randall, an insurance man whose communications sound wacky. The meeting he arranges for Randall is a waste of everyone’s time, and his decision to have this meeting may have been based on his emotions rather than any logical business purpose.

·         At the banquet, Bert Cooper is uncharacteristically emotional when he demands that Pete and Harry shake hands and make up. His demand isn’t unreasonable, but it doesn’t work because both Harry and Pete are emotionally overwhelmed and neither one approves of the other’s point of view, although logically, both of them have reasonable perspectives.

 

·         Betty is overwhelmed by the news of the assassination, and can’t decide whether to keep the television off to protect the children or keep it on all the time, because she feels she should.

·         Betty’s emotions get the best of her when she sees Bobby picking apart the mismatched wallpaper and tells him that he’s destroying the house – a gross exaggeration (although it may not be unusual for her to be emotionally driven and illogical as a parent).

 

·         Betty dreams of being the wife of a state senator and holds up a dress of hers that, logically, could not possibly fit her anymore. Her emotional desire to be the beautiful center of attention again drives this unrealistic behavior.

 

·         When Bobby is caught picking apart the wallpaper in his bedroom, he’s overcome by fear and so denies everything, even though it’s obvious that he did it.

 

·         Megan speaks with her father on the phone and is enormously disgusted by his “Marxist bullshit” analysis of the relationship between the assassination/riots and the presumed failure of capitalism. Her analysis of her father is that he hides behind his intellect so as not to feel his emotions. In other words, she believes that her father intellectualizes because he’s flooded with fear about feeling deeper emotions.

 

·         Henry speaks to Betty about Mayor Lindsay’s emotional fraudulence, smiling like he was going to a pancake breakfast. Lindsay may be hiding his overwhelmed emotions (about the riots throughout the city) behind a display of fake cheerfulness.

 

·         When Betty calls Don and demands that he come over and pick up the children, Don is too emotionally overwhelmed to think straight, and so he caves in to her demand even though he knows it makes no sense to drive the children through the riot-torn city. Normally, Don would say no, but in this case his emotions seem to have clogged his mind.

 

·         Feeling overwhelmed with sadness and not knowing what to do, Megan decides to take the children to the park to attend a vigil for MLK. The soundness of this plan is questionable, since the city is a dangerous place at the time, and bringing small children out is especially risky.

 

·         Maybe because of his own love of movies, Don takes Bobby to Planet of the Apes, which is about the destruction of America. It makes little sense that Don would consider it a good idea, from a rational perspective, to bring his little boy to a movie with such a dark message and menacing tone at a time when people are rioting in the streets, a movie that Bobby can’t really follow or understand.

 

·         When Michael takes Beverly Farber on a date, his overwhelming anxiety drives him to say a lot of awkward things that make little sense to say on a first date, if he were to plan rationally what to say.

 

·         After hearing about the assassination, Michael’s father decides to head to work on a Saturday just to get away from the news, even though he doesn’t work on Saturdays – not necessarily the logical thing to do when riots are occurring.

 

·         At the awards banquet, Pete calls Trudy and is obviously overwhelmed with loneliness and the desire to see his wife and daughter. Trudy is swept up in the emotions of the day’s events and seems touched that Pete has called, but after a few moments her mind returns to ruling her emotions and she blocks Pete from coming over.

 

·         After the weekend, Dawn shows up at Peggy’s instead of her own job at SCDP. This seems emotionally driven, since Dawn feels closer to Peggy than to anyone at SCDP.

 

·         The music that ends the episode, Love is Blue, speaks of a flood of emotions after a breakup: a blue world filled with sadness, a gray life with a cold heart, red eyes that cry, a green heart overcome with jealousy, and black nights feeling overwhelmingly lost and alone.

 

Another theme is trying to take care of others, but often with confusion and mixed results.

·         Ginny, the real estate agent, tries to take care of Peggy’s request to buy a home but is so befuddled about whether to bid high or low that she ends up losing the sale.

·         Abe has a general desire to take care of Peggy but thinks he shouldn’t weigh in on where she buys a home because he can’t contribute financially. Later, when prompted, he expresses his vision of their future together, and Peggy feels cared for because of it.  

·         Bert Cooper tries to provide leadership to Harry and Pete at the banquet, a way of trying to take care of them, when the two of them begin to argue, but he doesn’t really know how to pull it off.

·         Bert wants to take care of the people at SCDP by closing the office early, but confusion ensues when Roger insists on the 3:00 meeting with his oddball acquaintance, Randall.

 

·         Roger wants to take care of Randall in a way by giving him a meeting with Don, but by the end of the meeting it’s anybody’s guess as to whether Randall felt cared for.

 

·         Harry wants to take care of SCDP by paying attention to how the assassination and riots will affect business. However, his comments about this at the banquet don’t influence anyone else to think about the business, and in fact garner Pete’s moral indignation.

 

·         Don and Joan want to take care of Dawn by sending her home early, but when Dawn says she wants to stay, they seem to be a little confused and decide to let her do so.

 

·         Joan wants to take care of Dawn by giving her a hug and reassuring her that they’re sorry, but Joan’s care and concern are not believed or received by Dawn.

 

·         Dawn announces to Don and Joan that she came in because her mother thought she should, indicating that her mother was trying to take care of her best interests. She also told them that she went to stay with her aunt over the weekend, where her aunt presumably was a caretaker.

 

·         Don wants to do the right thing by Betty and his children, but ends up making the confused decision to drive his children through a dangerous route to take care of Betty’s emotions.

 

·         Betty wants to take care of her children by keeping the television off so they won’t hear more about the assassination, although later, due to her confusion, she has the television on all the time, defeating that objective.

 

·         Don wants to find a way to take care of Sylvia even though she’s in Washington, D.C., and he ends up sounding confused and lame on the phone in that effort.

 

·         Don tries to take care of Bobby by taking him to the movies. It’s questionable whether exposing Bobby to this dark movie at a time when the city is actually being torn apart is an effective way to shield him, but in the moment Don’s attention seems to help Bobby.

 

·         Michael’s father wants to take care of Michael by seeing that he gets married and has a family of his own. Despite his berating and rude tactics, his message gets through and Michael goes along with his father’s promptings. His father also talks about Noah’s work in taking care of the animals when the flood came.

 

·         Henry reassures Betty that, despite his plans to leave his current job and run for state senate, she will never have to worry about money – a typical way for men to take care of a wife and family that, in this case, is successful and appreciated.

 

·         Pete wants to take care of Trudy and Tammy emotionally, but when he calls Trudy and tries to come over to take care of them, Trudy rejects the idea. He feels awkward and lonely because he can’t fill that role for her.

 

One final observation: To me, Bobby’s character is not only unusual, it’s not believable.  Every child expresses self-interested desires and opinions most of the time, and we rarely hear Bobby talk much about what he likes, what he wants, etc. His sneakiness is believable when he denies picking apart the wallpaper and when he fakes a stomach ache, but his concern about Henry being killed (Henry hasn’t even run for office yet and doesn’t frequently speak before large crowds in the way that MLK did) is too big a stretch for me. When Bobby spoke directly to the theater usher and tried to strike up a man-to-man discussion about why people attend movies, I felt disappointed with the writers. We’ve never seen Bobby develop that kind of confidence, so how did he get it all of a sudden? Throughout Bobby’s life, Don has never paid enough attention to him for him to develop confidence in initiating a conversation with an adult man he doesn’t know. If Bobby were that confident, why wouldn’t he speak up more around his dad, the way Sally does? Based on his childhood, Bobby should feel pretty needy around Don (and hence, around other men) because Don has never given him much of his time, and fairly jealous of Sally because Don pays more attention to Sally than to him. It’s as though the writers are trying to make Bobby into an unusual character but instead have made him into an unnatural one. Please, writers: let Bobby be a natural boy filled with selfish interests first, and an unusual boy second.