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After watching the last few episodes of Mad Men, plus the preview for the next episode, I am starting to suspect the presence of a longer story arc — one that will extend beyond Season 2.
My evidence:
- The scene in Episode 8 where Cooper and Sterling explain to Don that he is being groomed to be the new public face of the agency, and will from now on will be attending black-tie events where he will meet people who actually run stuff. Like the world. Or at least New York. To most New Yorkers, it's kind of the same thing anyway.
- The severity with which Don rides his team over the office blood drive. Note the subtle turn toward the civic we are seeing.
- The Episode 10 preview, which consists entirely of Don prepping Peggy, Kinsey and Pete for a trip to California, where they'll try to fish in clients from the burgeoning aerospace industry and schmooze with the congressmen fighting for the accompanying budget appropriations. Don's lecture to them is very big-picture American politics stuff, and stunningly cynical. Oh yeah — it's accurate, as well.
My assertion: Don is going to become an astronaut.
I kid. Seriously though, Don is going to be pushed into public life in some way or other at the behest of his bosses. Unable to resist the pressure or the temptation — Don is obviously bored with advertising by now — he'll do it. This all but ensures that his shady past will come to light in the biggest possible way and, in the end, destroy him. Plausible? I think so. If I'm right, it's also proof that Matthew Weiner, like David Simon before him, is way into Aeschylus, Sophocles, et al. Funny how that's becoming a formula: Is enrollment swelling at classics departments all over the country thanks to hordes of aspiring cable drama writers?
Other thoughts on this week:
Whoever wrote the scene where we watch Freddie Rumson's drunken downfall definitely knows their alcoholics. Freddie's pants-peeing/blackout, total failure to do his job and confused return to consciousness hours later is exactly the kind of primal shaming event that signals to most pathological alcoholics that rock bottom is rapidly approaching. And that's exactly what happens to Freddie: Pete, sensing an opportunity, narcs him out. Duck, a white-knuckle drunk who sees his own weakness in Freddie's behavior, pushes Roger to fire him. Roger obliges. Peggy gets Freddie's job. She also, in the frantic rush to cover for him while he's unconscious, is years ahead of her time in understanding what is happening to him. "We'll say he’s sick," she tells Pete. "It's true."
Did anyone catch the awesome reference to Don's dad in the late-night bar scene? Don has just finished punching Jimmy Barrett in the nose and has retired (one step ahead of a neckless bouncer) to a neighborhood bar with Sterling. "That was a classic Archibald Whitman move,” Don tells him. "Who's that?" Sterling asks. "Just a drunk I used to know." As for the punch itself, it seemed much like an expression of genuine rage and much more pro forma. Jimmy violates some basic rule of decorum that has to do with men and their wives and their homes; Jimmy gets punched in the nose; society is preserved. I also appreciated that they made it clear that punching someone in the face really hurts your hand, even if you do it right. Most TV shows leave that part out.
What I'm leaving out: Betty crawls out of a bottle of Zinfandel long enough to play matchmaker between her (married) riding friend and the weird engaged sweater guy. Everyone is super-bummed that Marilyn Monroe died. Oh, and Don accidentally uses his salesmanship to convince Sterling to leave his wife — for Don's secretary! Don doesn't like surprises, especially not when he finds them out from Sterling's angry wife, Mona. He immediately demands a new secretary.
Being Don Draper's secretary is kind of like being head of the Indian National Congress or the Pakistan People's Party — enjoy the job, 'cause you're not going to have it for long!
Loved your analysis. Just wanted to say, I know Matt Weiner and he's not into the classics, he may have heard about them (cliff notes?) because he seems to have read very little and absorbed a lot. I don't know how he does it, but he knows things about people and has a more interest in where they're from etc, than intellectual or dramatic theory. Also, I'm pretty sure he writes every word of the show. That's what the other writers say anyway...
"Philadelphia" gets mentioned twice in this episode. Wassup wit dat?
@Roxanne: Philadelphia = purgatory. It's where Don is banished existentially to explain the failure of his marriage to his daughter, and where Freddie will likely be banished corporeally, to live out his working years in obscurity.
@Carte: Interesting...
I have to bone-up on my Dante.
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