By Andrew Johnston
Mad Men continues to bring the funny with an episode that furthers the exploration of Roger Sterling’s personality that began last week in addition to showing us a previously unseen side of Don Draper. His possessive, macho reaction to Roger’s drunken pass at Betty is consistent with the Don of previous episodes, but his revenge prank reveals a more playful sense of humor than the tendency toward dry, dark wit with which we’ve become familiar.
But while Roger is used as a source of comedy more than once (the scene where Don provides him with driving tips from the doorway is one of the series’ funniest), there are just as many scenes—if not more—that present him as a fairly pathetic figure. His unsuccessful attempt to schedule a last-minute tryst with Joan shows him longing for his youth (“I could put on my whites and we can pretend it’s V-J Day”), but even then his youth probably wasn’t all that—his naval heroism in the Pacific, revealed this week, falls short of his father’s WWI exploits, and he apparently went through childhood with the demeaning nickname “Peanut” (a nickname Bert Cooper still uses on occasion). No wonder, then, that he takes comfort in the privileges that come with having one’s name on the building.
Status and privilege play a big role in the episode. Even notwithstanding the era’s more permissive attitude toward driving under the influence, I’m sure some people will be disappointed in Don’s failure to keep Roger from getting behind the wheel after their massive binge, but Don has a zillion reasons to let Roger get behind the wheel. Above and beyond the being angry at Roger for putting the moves on Betty, there’s the simple fact that Roger’s his boss—an imperious one, as we see when he takes pleasure in yanking Pete Campbell’s chain by calling him “Paul”—and Roger wouldn’t have taken kindly to any attempt to keep him from driving. Then there’s the spite motive: Because Roger cozied up to Betty, there’s a level at which Don couldn’t care less if Roger has an accident.
Don’s actions against Pete Campbell in “New Amsterdam” showed him to be a very rash guy when angered, so the subtlety of his plot against Roger is a little bit unexpected but very, very impressive. All Don did was adopt the same deferential position he did at the beginning of the episode and the rest took care of itself (well, yeah, he bribed the elevator operator and then had to walk up all those stairs himself, but still). The dividends are significant: In addition to punishing Roger for scammig on Betty, the prank will presumably spare Don from working on the Nixon campaign (something he obviously wasn’t eager to do) and, by extension, spare him from having to work closely with Pete Cooper. Roger becomes the only conceivable scapegoat for the loss of the Nixon campaign, but he’s also the one person Bert Cooper is least likely to punish. It’s really kind of brilliant.
Pete Campbell’s subplot about the chip and dip raises the intriguing possibility that Pete is basically the guy Roger was 20 years ago. Yes, Pete tried to get proactive about manipulating Trudy in "5G", but here, he’s back to the thoroughly emasculated position he was in at the end of “New Amsterdam”, and her offscreen hectoring of him very much evokes what we can infer about the marriage of Roger and Mona Sterling (at least before the war made Roger more resigned and cynical). After “New Amsterdam”, there was a fair amount of fan speculation that Pete would try to turn his premarital one-nighter with Peggy into an ongoing affair as a means of compesating for his emasculation at home. After last week, talk turned to the possibility that this would be accompanied by Pete taking credit for her copywriting. Pete and Peggy’s first scene certainly seems to suggest this, but I think it’s a little too obvious a development. The odd bonding between them that we see in their last scene together made me think of another possibility: What if they join forces to advance each others’ position at the agency? Now that we’ve passed the halfway point of the season (sad but true), it seems pretty obvious that the narrative momentium will increase and the connections between characters will get tighter and more complicated by the week. In more concise terms, we’ll find out soon enough.
Miscellaneous points:
Pete’s acquisition of the rifle and his horsing around with it makes a nice callback to the hunting theme of the story that wound up in Boy’s Life back in “5G”. It’s a nicely metaphorical obsession for him to have, since hunting is regarded in so many cultures as a means of proving one’s manhood, and being his own man is obviously Pete’s most burning desire. It’s a goal that means so much to him that he’ll happily take shortcuts to achieve it, and ths, I suspect, will be his undoing on more than one occasion in the episodes (and seasons—I wish!) to come.
The details we get about Roger's father's WWI service are sketchy, but I'm inclined to think the elder Sterling survived the incident in the trenches, which--here's where the chronology gets tricky again--presumably took place before Roger was born (because let's face it, I can't see a rich guy with a kid being drafted to serve in the war--or, rather, I can't see a guy like that not being able to get out of the draft, unless of course he was as eager to get away from his wife as Roger is from Mona.
Being against smoking doesn’t usually make someone seem Machiavellian and evil, but so it is with Bert Cooper, whose chiding of Roger weirdly makes Sterling Cooper’s seniou namesake seem that much more slimy. His anecdote about Hitler and Chamberlain is absolutely brilliant, however, and while it’s probably too good to be true, I really wish it was. I’ve attempted to verify it on Google, but without success. If any readers know more about this, I’d appreciate it if you could lay out the details in a comment below, and I suspect others would be just as grateful as I.
Andrew Johnston is the television critic for Time Out New York.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Mad Men Fridays: Season 1, Episode 7 "Red in the Face"
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15 comments:
I think Cooper's anti-smoking diatribe was also a bit of an excuse for the show to start moving away from the clouds of tobacco in every scene that had clearly become too distracting for some viewers, if my Star-Ledger mailbag is any kind of representative sample. If Cooper pressures Sterling to cool it with the cigs, the young guys in the office will fall in line quickly.
I'm not sure, but I have the sense that the generation who fought in World War I didn't necessarily try to stay out of the army in the way that later ones did. Yes, they had a draft, but it's entirely plausible that Roger's father was a volunteer, perhaps even an officer, though the story does seem more appropriate to a grunt.
That was a time when "heroism" was something to be desired, right?
I love the way this show builds emotion out of small details, but I still get frustrated when it hits too hard on the distance between then and now. What was the line Don or Roger said in the stairwell about how you'd get out in a fire? 9/11 even changed 1960?
Steve--
Unless people used elevators during fires in 1960--which would flabbergast me--there was nothing anachronistic about the line--basically, it was an observation that if they had to use the stairs in a fire, it'd be an easier schlep because they were going down and not up.
Wow, no mention of the Betty subplot and the (extraordinary, in my mind) scene wherein Betty recalls her mother's advice about "painting a masterpiece"?
I thought that spoke to some of the choices/trade-offs that women make: using one's appearance to "pay our way", the sense that a woman must project a facade of calm perfection, and a simultaneous fear of and longing for freedom. If anyone thinks these issues were eradicated by feminism, just watch an episode of Oprah or pick up any woman's magazine.
Relatedly, I watch this show with a group of female friends and we all find the female characters to be far more compelling than the male characters. Forget Don and Roger - we want more Betty and Joan!
I love your weekly analysis and it is sad that we're past the halfway point of the season. Mad Men is the most interesting non-HBO show in years.
Just as BATTLESTAR GALACTICA is the best post-9/11 series, MAD MEN is the best series in many years regarding sexism and racism, because both series are freed from considering the Best Case Scenario.
Yes, humans must consider retaliatory genocide, if they are to survive. Yes, the use of torture against Cylons is approved, and seen as crucial to human survival, even if the torturers, at the end, will be something different from humane.
Yes, women are even worse off than what was implied in those Rat Pack appellations, because all those entertainers left wives at home, while they dogged around in Vegas, just like our boys do at Sterling Cooper. But now we see those women, up close, and how the lack of information they have about their lives is killing them.
And they wonder why men started dying of heart attacks, as an epidemic, beginning in the fifties and sixties.
Andrew,
I'd argue that the key line of the episode was a little throwaway the beginning of the episode, made by Paul as a lunch crowd heads out the door: "Last one to Chung Lee's(?) gets to wheel Kenneth Cosgrove, published author, home in a baby carriage". It is a strange, almost meaningless line that only made sense to me near the end of the episode.
Wasn't the basic conceit of this episode that all of these people act like children? Pete acts no older than 12 for the entire episode, whether in line at the store ("Matherton has the clap"), at home with his wife (petulant, shot from below if I recall, with a wife (read: mom) yelling at him from off-camera), or at the office (the gunsight POV, his Boy's Life story variant for Peggy). Peggy seems so bewitched and confused by her feelings after talking to Pete that she has to go buy a metaphorical ham sandwich and cherry danish. And Betty seems to be actually regressing as a character: She finds it perfectly understandable that Glenn would want a lock of her hair, but her response when questioned about it by an adult is to throw a (low key) fit and run away.
I also thought Betty's childishness was further hinted at in the scene with Betty and Francine. Francine seems a little surprised that Betty hates Kennedy. I think that's because Francine recognizes that Kennedy is attractive. But sexual attraction is too adult a concept for Betty. Betty is excited by men looking at her, and she understands that she should want men to look at her ("painting a masterpiece"), but she seems confused by what they might want to do to her ("No, this is different. I don't want my husband to know about this."). Compare her assurance at the dinner table, flirting with Roger, with her awkwardness in the kitchen, when Roger tries to take things further.
Don of course concocts a plan to make Roger throw up.
Roger's arc in this episode is a bit different. He begins the episode as a father figure, only to be brought low by his son. He begins the episode as Kenneth Cosgrove, published author, but ends it in his baby carriage, last man up the stairs.
I still think Mad Men is more style than substance. But this week's conceit (or like last week's use of Israeli tourism to explore the notion of exile) do make things interesting. Sadly, it looks like next week will be a Salvatore spotlight and I'm very wary about how that's going to go.
Anon
"Last one to Chung Lee's(?) gets to wheel Kenneth Cosgrove, published author, home in a baby carriage".
@anon: don't put too much credence in the closed captioning--it's dreadful both in its ignorance of the subject matter and its appalling syntax and grammar (would of for would've). The line refers to Chumley's, a well-known bar in the West Village that began life as a speakeasy.
Karen,
I was pretty sure he said Chumley's, but I didn't know it was an actual restaurant. I put in the question mark because the poor captioning raised one of those historical questions I find distracting about the show -- Would it be so out of character for the office to go out for some Chinese? Most of the restaurant dining we've seen has been more upscale, but these guys aren't making that much money and we did see an oyster joint in the episode.
Anon
Searching for anachronisms, many have commented on the premature appearance of an IBM Selectric; not supposed to appear for another year. However,on an office wall, mounted slightly askew in Babylon, appears a preliminary promo sketch for what very well may be IBM. Could Sterling, Cooper be using prototypes? BTW, who is Kenneth Cosgrove?
Anon--
Most of the dining scenes have involved Don and Roger, so it's no surprise they've mostly taken place at swank joints. When we've seen the juniors eating lunch, it's often been at diners or even a lunchroom inside the SC building. Nonetheless, I'm willing to cut the writers a large degree of slack relative to the characters eating at nice restaurants thanks to the hallowed ad-industry tradition of the expense account lunch.
I'm late to the party as usual, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned what I thought was a huge misstep in this episode. The scene where Betty's pregnant friend drinks and smokes was so telegraphed I'm surprised it wasn't in slow motion. I haven't been as bothered as others have by the period commentary, but on this one I think they crossed the line into condescension.
The shine is beginning to wear off this show for me - I'm starting to get a feeling of no one at the wheel. It has been mentioned a couple of times that Roger Sterling (John Slattery) is the "richest" character on the show. While I admire Slattery's perormance - he could teach a workshop in drunk acting - the amount of time given to someone gradually being revealed to be an inconsequential boor is a bit hard to take. And where did Don's prankster side come from?
The Random House Dictionary definition of PRANK, "a trick of an amusing, playful, or sometimes malicious nature" may explain Andrew's use of the word. Furthermore, RH defines a prankster as "a ... malicious person who plays tricks... at the expense of another." After Don's boorish and selfish scenes vs Peggy it is obvious that he has a dark, malicious side not only fueled against Roger by Martinis and jealousy but also driven by rampant narcissism. My question is, why do I still like him and find Roger and Peter slimy, spoiled and bratty?
Pardon,
I believe I misspoke and confused Betty and Peggy in previous note. I meant Betty
I think we saw some parallels in the relationships between Sterling and Cooper and that between Sterling and Don. Cooper was calling out his junior partner as weak, and perhaps he knows more about Roger Sterling than we do. (Though I loved Roger's comeback.) Meanwhile, at dinner, Sterling took a jab at Don's speech patterns (the dropped Gs), challenging his sophistication. (Of course, we know why this would hit so close to home for Don.) The pass at Betty was just another way of reminding Don who the boss is--which Sterling himself acknowledges. Thus, it is fitting that Don should take his revenge by arranging for Roger to be humiliated in front of the closest thing he has to a boss at the firm.
I think I'm with Simon on my feelings about this show. I can't really figure out where it is going. On the other hand, I seem to want to hang around to find out.
What I think is interesting is that Don took out his frustrations on Betty in regards to Roger's flirtations. While Don tries to play it like he's not part of the business game, it's obvious that he doesn't have the balls to confront his boss, even when Roger gives him an opportunity to.
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