Mad Men Season 2, Episode 8: In Dutch with the wife

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Mad Men Season 2, Episode 8: In Dutch with the wife

POSTED: Tuesday, September 16, 2008, 2:30 PM

Filed Under: TV Mad Men

Oh yeah, it's that bad.

amctv.com

Heineken. Nowadays, it's what you drink if there's no decent beer available, but for some reason you can't just bring yourself to suck down Black Label or Schlitz like everybody else.

But apparently, in 1962, it was something altogether different: a marker of global citizenship. Let those schmucks down at the corner bar blow their GI disability check on Pabst. You? You've got your feet up on the ottoman, eating fancy cheese with a toothpick, Reader's Digest version of Middlemarch open in your lap. And you're drinking Heineken. Yeah!

The way Mad Men tells it, Americans were so isolated in 1962 that Madison Avenue ad firms like Sterling-Cooper could actually dupe them into thinking that the Netherlands, easily one of the worst, dullest, grayest, most peevish countries in the entire history of the nation-state — the country that invented Calvinism, for chrissakes — is a hub of sophisticated beer drinking. Belgium is right next door, people! You can walk there!

But besides representing the sheer naked cynicism of the advertising industry, Heineken has another important role in this week's episode — wrecker of the Drapers' marriage.

But how, you ask? It's survived multiple affairs and what is very possibly the biggest case of identity theft of the 20th century. How could a simple bottle of crappy pilsner push it over the edge?

It goes like this. S-C has the Heineken account. Rather than trying to expand their barroom presence on the East Coast, which is what the client wants, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has a vision that hyping it in supermarkets as this, like, "Euro-drink," can get well-to-do housewives to buy it for home entertaining. To test his theory, Don does something so weird that I don't really think there's a word for it in the social-sciences lexicon.

He runs a test promotion in supermarkets in the geographic area where he lives. The campaign takes place about a week before the Drapers are scheduled to host a dinner party for the Sterlings (John Slattery and Talia Balsam), Duck (Mark Moses) and some country club pals (Matt McKenize and Amy Landecker ). Don doesn't say a word to wife Betty (January Jones) about the promotion, and sure enough, in the process of planning an elaborate, around-the-world-themed menu, she sees Heineken and picks up a case. Later, as the guests listen to her explain the menu, she points out the beer, and Duck and Sterling explode with laughter, shock and disbelief at Don's genius. Don smirks. Betty immediately realizes she's the butt of the joke, but it takes her a minute to piece together the punchline. She's furious. Later that night, when the guests have left, her humiliation over Heineken finally pushes her into confronting Don about his infidelity.

Don does what you'd expect. Squares up the ol' jaw (pretty square to begin with) and denies, denies, denies. But Betty's not having it. She goes to sleep in their daughter's room. This is the first of what will become a three-part confrontation between Don and Betty. The second comes the next morning, when Betty, still in her party dress from the night before, goes to town on Don's stuff, rifling through his suits and drawers. She does so every step of the way with a bottle of red wine in her non-rifling hand. By the end of the day, she hasn't found anything, but she's put the "Betty" in "Betty Ford," getting so wasted that Don comes home to find her passed out on the bed, the sole of her foot bleeding from where she stepped on a stray wine glass before losing consciousness.

He goes to sleep on the couch. She wakes him up a few hours later for Round 2, which proves to be one of the most beautifully rendered Mad Men scenes to date. Shot in alternating close-ups, with room noises turned up unnervingly loud, Betty acknowledges that she's found no evidence of infidelity, but this makes it worse, not better— she's simply been out-maneuvered again. Betty demands a confession and, in a way, gets one — Don tells her pleadingly that he doesn't want to lose her and the kids. Not something you say if you haven't actually done anything wrong. And anyway, hell, they've been married close to a decade. The eyes say it all.

Round 3: Betty has decided she can walk this one off. It's afternoon. The kids are watching TV. She sits down on the couch to read Life or some shit. No indication that anything is wrong. And then the hateful Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) appears on TV. It's the hideous Utz commercial that started this whole mess. Betty has a moment of clarity — this marriage is never going to be OK, not with all the Jimmys and Bobbies and Rogers and every other snide associate of her husband laughing at her. She calls Don at work and tells him not to come home.

Odd, these post-war domestic dynamics. Don treats Betty like a child in nearly every aspect of their marriage, and yet there are these strange, hidden corners of the marriage where her authority is absolute. This is apparently one of them. Don obliges her request. We last see him settling in for the evening in the S-C break room, sipping thoughtfully on — what else? — a Heineken.

In other news, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) gets browbeaten into lending her marketing services to promoting her parish's CYO dance. For her trouble, she gets backseat driving from the CYO board, who complain that the dancing figures she's designed for the poster need to "leave room for the Holy Ghost." And Father Gill (Colin Hanks) tries to gently beat a confession out of her for her out-of-wedlock secret kid. Nice try, Father. Might have worked on 1960 Peggy. 1962 Peggy shuts down way harder dudes than you every day.

Joan (Christina Hendricks) finds herself reading TV scripts for Harry's (Rich Sommer) nascent TV department. Initially just there for damage control, she shows real aptitude and brings in a bunch of business. She brings in so much business, actually, that they decide to create a full-time position. And naturally, they give it to the first dude who walks in off the street. Sorry, Joan! I wonder if this will make her re-evaluate Peggy?

We end with one of those watch-everyone-bedding-down-for-the-night montages that have become a fixture of American cable TV drama. (This show does them particularly well.) Then, just as you're tuning out, Father Gill busts out an acoustic guitar and launches into what is, if I'm not mistaken, "Promised Land" by Johnnie Allan. It's totally unexpected and totally perfect.

I love you, Mad Men.

Cantara Christopher

Posted 2008-09-17 17:23:07

The song at the end of the episode is "Early in the Morning" sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. You can catch a YouTube clip of them singing the tune at my website, http://cantara.vox.com, where I blog some of the music and poetry from Mad Men.

Joel

Posted 2008-09-17 23:30:34

Thanks Cantara. Good call - and great blog!

Roxanne

Posted 2008-09-19 18:44:51

What impressed me most about the Heineken bit is how it reinforces the message of their current ad campaign --pony kegs for your tricked out basement/garage bar.

Posted by Joel Tannenbaum @ 2:30 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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