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.

Mad Men Episode 6-4: To Have and To Hold

Recap: The episode begins with Pete, Don, and Timmy from Heinz ketchup having a private meeting at Pete’s Manhattan apartment. Pete and Don talk Timmy into giving them a chance to develop an ad campaign for ketchup, and Timmy agrees to look at what they come up with. Calling this “Project K” back at the office so nobody will know what they’re up to, Pete and Don enlist Stan to work with them. Stan sets up an office behind a door that says “Private” and places tin foil over the windows so nobody can peek inside. Later, they present their ad campaign at a private meeting with Timmy at the Heinz office, and discover upon leaving that Peggy and her team are waiting in line to present their competing ad campaign. Don is angry and says: “I only did it because no one else was supposed to know.” Frustrated, he listens to Peggy through the door as she delivers her presentation. The three SCDP guys end up at a restaurant counter or bar where they commiserate, and are surprised when Peggy and her CGC team enter the room to join them. Acting relatively friendly, the CGC team offers the news that both teams lost and J. Walter Thomson got the business. As the SCDP team files out, Stan gives Peggy the finger. Ultimately, Raymond of Heinz beans finds out that SCDP had contact with Timmy and drops SCDP as their ad agency.

Dawn meets a girlfriend at a restaurant lunch counter where they talk about Dawn being maid-of-honor at the friend’s upcoming wedding, and about the girlfriend helping Dawn by setting her up with dates. At work, Scarlett, Harry’s secretary, needs to go out and shop for a birthday present for Clara, another secretary, whose birthday is the following day. She asks Dawn to punch out for her so she can go out early and shop on company time, and Dawn agrees. Later that afternoon, Joan finds out that Scarlett left the building, and the next day she confronts both Scarlett and Dawn. She fires Scarlett. Just as Scarlett walks down the hall to leave, with all her things in a box, Harry walks in and learns what happened. Harry confronts Joan and tells Scarlett she’s not fired, and to go back to work. Joan then goes to an executive meeting and is told by Cooper and others that she shouldn’t fire the women. Meeting her girlfriend for lunch again, Dawn talks about the incident and how everyone at SCDP is scared. The girlfriend advises her: “They’re not your friends” but Dawn says she really wants the job and believes she’s not being persecuted – everyone’s being treated badly, not just her. Back at work, Dawn goes to Joan’s office, shuts the door, and tells her: “I think it would be only fair if you dock my pay” for the time Scarlett left the building to buy Clara’s gift. Angry about having her authority undercut by the other executives, Joan lashes out at Dawn coyly by putting her in charge of the inventory closet and time cards. At first Dawn thinks this is a friendly move, but Joan makes it clear that it’s a punishment. Dawn says she doesn’t care if everyone else hates her, but wants Joan’s approval. Joan says coldly: “We’ll see.”

In their apartment, Joan and her mother entertain a guest, Kate, an old friend of Joan’s. Kate gives Joan’s mother a makeover, and they all have dinner together. Kate is a sales director for Mary Kay Cosmetics but is in NYC for a job interview with Avon. She has a private meeting set up the next day for an interview. Kate expresses how she’s always looked up to Joan and gives Joan a pep talk about how great she’s doing, even if Joan doesn’t feel she’s doing so well. Joan is equally supportive of Kate’s career. Later, Joan and Kate go to a restaurant for dinner where no alcohol is served, and where there’s a telephone at every table. Kate says a friend of hers told her about the place. Since they’re not getting any calls, Joan asks the waiter to check and see if their phone is working. The waiter calls their table from another phone, and Joan passes the phone to Kate, saying, “He likes you.” Kate and the waiter, Leo, arrange to go out to a place he knows about, and Joan agrees to go along. In the cab ride, Leo sits between the two women and says, “Let’s see who’s a better kisser.” He kisses Joan but likes Kate better. The place they end up looks like a private, underground-type club where people smoke marijuana, drink, and make out. Leo and Kate make out, and Leo calls a friend, Johnny, to make out with Joan. The next morning, Joan and Kate wake up in Joan’s apartment and look wasted. Kate later says, “Why did I do that?” She answers her own question with, “I just had to try it.” Joan advises her that when she goes home, everything will be right where it belongs, as if nothing happened.

At SCDP, Ken sits down in Harry’s office and complains about his father-in-law, Ed (of Dow Chemical). Ed says they need some good PR because they’re getting a lot of bad publicity about selling Napalm to kill the Vietnamese. Ken says, “If he wants people to stop hating him, he should stop dropping Napalm on children” (as if Ed were in charge of U.S. military operations). Later, Ken and Harry set up a private meeting with Ed at Dow, offering to help Dow’s image by having them sponsor an hour-long TV program of Broadway musical hits. Harry says, “How would you like to be responsible for making people smile?” Ken says, “Brought to you by Dow Chemical…family products for the American family.” Ed and associates are interested. On returning to SCDP, Harry discovers that Scarlett has just been fired. Not only does he insist that Scarlett is not fired, but he marches into the executive meeting being held right then and demands to become part of the executive team, citing his many accomplishments, some of which the others seem unaware. Later, Roger and Bert call Harry into their office for a private meeting where they present him with a check slightly larger than his annual income. They say it’s “full commission” on Broadway Joe, the show they arranged with Ed for Dow Chemical. Noticeably missing is Ken, the salesman who would normally have received the commission. Harry thanks them for the money, but continues to argue that he should become a partner at the firm. He walks out of the room threatening to move to another firm.

We first see Megan at work talking to Arlene, who tells her “Mel has big plans for you” and invites Megan and Don to meet herself and her husband, Mel, for dinner.  At home, Megan talks to Don and prepares him for the fact that she’ll soon be having love-making scenes on the TV show. Don says he doesn’t like it but needs to think through it. When Don and Megan have dinner with the couple, Arlene suggests that they go back to their place to get to know each other better, hinting that they want to do some wife-swapping or perhaps group sex. Mel says, “Hey, it might not work…it’s a chemistry experiment.” Don and Megan take a cab home instead, and on the way they remark about how awkward the proposition was. Megan says, “I don’t know whether to laugh or be sick…I have to go back to work with them.” The next day Megan goes to work, but Don stays in bed and Megan remarks that he’s going to be late. Instead of going to work, Don sneaks into Megan’s workplace and watches her lovemaking scene from backstage. Arlene appears and asks Don if he enjoys watching. Don ignores her and follows Megan to her dressing room for a private discussion that quickly turns into a big argument. Don basically calls her a prostitute and says, “Why don’t you have dinner with Arlene and Mel tonight? They’re much more open-minded.”

Meanwhile, early in the episode Don makes out with Sylvia in their building’s elevator, and at the end of the episode he stops in at Sylvia’s home to make love. When he notices Sylvia’s cross on her necklace, he asks her to take it off but she refuses. When Sylvia says, “I pray for you to find peace,” Don is deeply affected. He then moves her cross around to her back and begins to make love to her.

 

This episode is held together by the theme of private/secretive events that are often exposed awkwardly.

·        Pete and Don meet with Timmy from Heinz at Pete’s apartment because they are keeping their project a secret (“Project K), so that nobody else at SCDP or at Heinz (especially Raymond) will know about it. When they pull in Stan, they set him up to work at the office in a room marked “private.”

·        When the SCDP men present their ad campaign to Timmy’s group at Heinz, they think they are being given private access; Don is angry when they file out of the room and see Peggy’s team waiting in line, realizing his secret project has already been exposed.

·        After Don’s group leaves the Heinz office, they go to a bar or restaurant to commiserate as a team. They are miffed when Peggy and the CGC team enter and sit down to join them – and even more miffed to learn that the CGC group knows the outcome before they do: that J. Walter Thomson got the businesses.

·        Dawn occasionally meets her girlfriend for lunch. There she confides her private feelings about SCDP and the people there.

·        Scarlett, Harry’s secretary, needs to sneak out of work early in order to purchase a birthday gift for another secretary to be given to her the next day. She speaks privately with Dawn and asks her to punch out for her. This secret is discovered when Joan goes looking for Scarlett and then finds out that Dawn has punched her timecard for the day.

 

·        Joan privately confronts Scarlett and fires her, but Harry discovers her executive decision, which up to that point nobody else in a position of authority knows about, and reverses it. Then the entire executive board hears about Joan’s unilateral decision and makes sure neither Scarlett nor Dawn are fired.

 

·        The executive meetings are private, although everyone in the office can see them meeting because they convene behind glass walls. Harry bursts into their meeting at once point and awkwardly demands to become part of the board, at least in part so that he can be privy to what’s happening throughout the company.

 

·        Joan gets her secret revenge on Scarlett and Dawn’s private arrangement by assigning Dawn to take charge of the inventory closet and time cards as a punishment.

 

·        Joan, her mother, and her friend Kate share a private dinner at Joan’s apartment. Kate tells of an interview she has scheduled with Avon, a potential new employer, which is a secret to her current employer.

 

·        Joan and Kate go to a restaurant together and end up with a guy from the restaurant who takes them to an underground-type night club, a semi-secret place where they make out (or more) with guys they just met. The next morning, Kate wonders why she did that, and Joan says she can just go home and find everything in its place, suggesting that the secret will remain undiscovered and she can pretend it never happened.

 

·        Ken and Harry talk in Harry’s office about Ken’s father-in-law, Ed, from Dow Chemical. ogether they cook up an idea for a family entertainment special that Dow could sponsor to help Dow’s image. They then set up a private meeting with Ed and his team, and later we learn that the production was a success. The way this private event was revealed to management was by Harry himself, when he walked in on the executive meeting and announced it awkwardly. He is later rewarded privately by Sterling and Cooper with a large check, although commissions normally go to the salesman, which in this case would be Ken.

 

·        Arlene and Megan have a private discussion and set up a dinner date for themselves and their respective spouses at a restaurant. At the restaurant, Arlene and Mel propose that they all go back to their place and get to know one another better, suggesting group or wife-swapping sex. When their secretive intentions become clear to Don and Megan, they feel awkward and decline the invitation.

 

·        Megan’s job as an actor involves new onstage love-making scenes, which are inherently private in nature. She reveals this to Don, who feels awkward about it, and Don decides to follow her to work the next day and secretly watch her from backstage. When Megan is done with her love-making scene and walks offstage, she sees Don and realizes her private feelings at work have been revealed to him. They then go to Megan’s dressing room to have an argument in private.

 

·        Don makes out with Sylvia in the elevator of their building, and later he sneaks over to her apartment where they have a private conversation and make love. These secret events are, thus far, not revealed to anyone else, but the placement of these scenes in this episode seems to foreshadow that their secret affair will be revealed very awkwardly to others in the future.

 

A secondary theme is helpfulness – either friends helping friends or teamwork.

·        Several people work successfully in teams in this episode: Pete and Don’s team from SCDP, who work on the Heinz ketchup proposal; Peggy and Ted’s team at CGC, who work on a competing proposal; Timmy and his team at Heinz ,who listen to the proposals; the J. Walter Thomson team, who won the business; the executive board at SCDP, who work together to talk Joan down from her firing frenzy; and Ken and Harry, who form a team to help Dow Chemical.

·        Dawn meets her girlfriend for lunch, and the lunch meetings provide her with personal support that she doesn’t get at SCDP. This private friendship gives her a chance to talk about her work experiences without the risk of having her words repeated as gossip at work. The two friends have a mutually supportive relationship, with Dawn trying to help her friend with her wedding (although forgetting at one point) and the girlfriend trying to set Dawn up with potential dates. She also gives Dawn what’s intended as friendly advice about SCDP so she can protect herself: “Those people are not your friends.”

 

·        Scarlett helps the other secretaries and especially Clara by taking time off to shop for Clara’s birthday present, as is their tradition in the secretarial pool, and she gets her a beautiful scarf.

·        Dawn tries to help Scarlett as a friend by punching out for her at the end of the day.

·        Harry helps Scarlett (and himself) by standing up to Joan and telling Scarlett to go back to her desk.

 

·        In an effort to help Joan and/or Scarlett, Dawn meets privately with Joan in Joan’s office and offers to have her paycheck docked.

·        Kate helps Joan’s mother by giving her a makeover.

·        Joan helps Kate by making dinner for her and letting her stay at her place while she’s in the city for a job interview.

 

·        We hear that Kate’s friend has helped her out by telling her about a unique restaurant where people get dates by calling each other on phones at each table.

·        At the restaurant, Joan helps to set Kate up with a date; when Joan answers the phone and talks to Leo, she hands the receiver to Kate and says, “He likes you.”

·        After Joan and Kate go to the underground nightclub, Leo calls in a friend of his, Johnny, so that Joan will have someone to make out with too. In the process, Leo is helping both Joan and Johnny.

 

·        When the CGC team joins the SCDP team after their Heinz ketchup presentations, Ted and Peggy try to be relatively friendly to Don, Stan, and Pete, although their friendly conversation is rebuffed.

 

·        Arlene purports to be friends with Megan and offers an invitation for dinner to Don and Megan, ostensibly to help Megan’s career. Arlene and Mel then tell Don and Megan that they like them both and want to get to know them better at their home. At first this sounds friendly to Megan, but ultimately she realizes that what they want is more than friendship, or perhaps too much “friendship” for what she and Don are interested in.

 

·        Don and Sylvia are more than lovers; they’re also friends. Sylvia has a keen understanding about what Don experiences in life, and says that she prays for him to find peace. Don feels the impact of this statement in a deep way, and Sylvia’s insights into his mind/soul may help to explain his passion for her.