Mad Men Season 2, Episode 6: Sorry, I'm all tied up at the moment

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Mad Men Season 2, Episode 6: Sorry, I'm all tied up at the moment

POSTED: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 10:43 PM

Filed Under: TV Mad Men

Oh I'm sorry, did I forget to mention THAT I'M FUCKING CRAZY?

amctv.com

This week, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) learns that the glass ceiling is not actually a ceiling but a bar. Or rather, it's a series of bars where her male colleagues get wasted, talk about chicks and write stuff down on napkins. The stuff they write on the napkins then becomes the basis for ad copy which Peggy is not involved in, because she wasn't at the bar, because she wasn't invited. Get it? This is, for roughly the last half century, how workplace discrimination has operated — not through sudden, blazing flashes of prejudice (although there has been no shortage of those), but through a million tiny slights. And that, in case you'd forgotten, is why Mad Men is so amazing. 'Cause they get that stuff.

Frustrated that she is being kept on the sidelines for Sterling-Cooper's new campaign for Playtex, Peggy enlists the help of Joan (Christina Hendricks), whose advice is a retread of Bobbie's (Melinda McGraw) from last week: Work it. She complies, turning up uninvited at episode's end at the burlesque bar where the pomade squad is being treated by the Playtex execs. With low neckline, makeup and hair down, Peggy inspires genuine confusion in Ken (Aaron Staton) — not exactly a Mensa challenge there — open hostility from Pete (Vincent Kartheiser), whose bad copy ideas for his father-in-law's account she's been ignoring, and an impressively lecherous come-on from one of the old Playtex guys: He seats her in his lap and asks her what she wants for Christmas. I know. Santa Claus. Nothing is sacred.

Don (Jon Hamm) once again proves himself 20 years ahead of the curve — this time by showing a penchant for S & M. Bobbie's totally into being tied to the hotel bed, but not so into being left there with the romantic parting words "I told you to stop talking." Most people would get the hint at this point that they are dealing with a dangerous lunatic. But I suspect not Bobbie — who incidentally has two teenage kids, we learn this week. Don seems unnerved by this, but much more unnerved by the revelation that Bobbie has been comparing performance notes on him with some of his past flings. Manhattan's a small island (which is probably why so many of them move to Philly), and for pathological secret-keeper like Draper/Whitman, it's maybe getting a little too small.

You know who else has two kids? Dry-drunk head of accounts Duck Phillips (Mark Moses). We get to meet both of them this week, along with Duck's estranged wife and his dog Chauncey, who he later blames for a near-relapse and leaves in a parking garage. I had to take a stray husky to Philly PAWS this weekend and the guilt was only beginning to subside when this scene came on. I feel like Matthew Weiner is messing with my head from afar.

In other news, Pete violates his marriage vows for the first of what I'm sure will be many, many times. And the creepy horse (Gabriel Mann) dude apologizes to Betty. Peggy handles it with characteristic aplomb. "As we used to say in college," she tells him, "let's be friends!" And here we have a very rare Mad Men anachronism: Betty supposedly went to Bryn Mawr. I assure you, no one in the entire history of Bryn Mawr College has ever said "Let's be friends."

Roxanne

Posted 2008-09-03 23:42:46

Heh. Joan essentially tells her to grow up ...and in the very next scene she's in, Peggy plops herself into "Santa's" lap. The use of The Decemberists "The Infanta" at the top of the show makes so much sense.

Mar

Posted 2008-09-06 18:22:49

Does anyone know what that song is at the beginning of the episode?

drew lazor

Posted 2008-09-06 18:38:45

See the first comment: It's "The Infanta" by the Decemberists.

Helen

Posted 2009-10-01 18:41:37

up



It's "The Carousel" =)

Helen

Posted 2009-09-26 11:12:31

Hi, I know it was a year ago but I can't get the closing credits track out of my mind. I love piano <3 <3 <3 Does anyone know what that song was, please? (closing credits of the episode 6, season 2)

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