Sep 2, 2009
Mad Men: Glaciers on Mars
This essay is part of “Point-Hyperpoint: Mad Men,” a rollicking series of posts devoted to discussing AMC’s drama series. Spoilers abound. To read the entire series, please visit this page. To see all of Plasma Pool’s “Point-Hyperpoint” discussions, please click here.
I can’t possibly disagree that the Campbells were clearly having the time of their lives, but did you notice all the glances that Pete kept throwing off the dance floor towards Roger? Besides the fact that the dance was so ornately overdesigned in its abstract silliness (did anyone ever actually do the whole bend-over-swing-your-hands-over-your-knees move?), it was even more insane to consider that, in ineffable Pete Campbell style, the whole dance was meant to impress The Boss. “Trudy,” you can imagine Pete saying during a rehearsal, “this dance is important for my career!”
I read the blog by Tim Goodman that you linked to in your post, Eric, and one thing I have to take issue with is Goodman’s assertion that Mad Men is “a series about Don Draper/Dick Whitman.” On one hand, I’m tempted to disagree, particularly because this season seems to be about expanding the show’s perspective more than ever into the personal lives of non-Drapers. On the other hand, Goodman might be right, at least to the extent that “Don Draper/Dick Whitman” is less of a character than an overall theme for the show.
If there’s one running motif that seems guaranteed to tie every character together in one David Milchian bow, it’s shape-changing. Paul Kinsey, we learn, didn’t always speak like a mid-century Roosevelt patrician (aside: I have to say, it makes his character slightly more appealing that, far from being a rich boy pretending to be a bohemian, he’s a poor boy pretending to be a rich boy pretending to be a bohemian). Pete Campbell has to go by Dyckman in good company or else he’s just another skinny nobody with bad hair. So far, fully half of the female cast on the show has gotten pregnant, and the other half (Joan and Trudy) keeps trying. I’m not quite clear what to make of Betty’s baby-bump interaction with the Friend of Rockefeller, except to say that I thought it was about a billion times hotter than I would have considered possible if you had told me on Sunday morning that tonight’s Mad Men would feature a five-minute scene where an old man touches a pregnant belly. For all the leisurely (not to say glacial) pacing of the show’s narrative, Mad Men is fascinated by change on the molecular level.
Anyways, don’t insult glacial pacing — when glaciers move, continents form. Eric, would I be wrong in saying that your reaction to this episode is somewhat equivalent to my reaction to the last one: It might be slow, it might be vague, it might not really show anything happening, but it’s still awesome all the same? We talked so much about The Sopranos in our opening arguments (full disclosure: I just wrote about three paragraphs of an extended comparison for this episode before I scrapped it), but on that show there was always a multitude of offscreen dangers — the FBI, the other mobsters, Tony’s old girlfriends — that tended to make the show feel more tense minute-to-minute than some episodes (Italians Vs. Native-Americans on Columbus Day!) actually justified.
But on Mad Men there’s no real danger, except that somehow every interaction (when the show is cooking) feels laced with some kind of deeper existential threat. It’s not just that it’s the ’60s, so everybody’s worried about nuclear war; it’s not just that every woman Don looks at is an indirect danger to the sanctity of his marriage. Certain characters on the show — Don, Betty, definitely Roger, Bert Cooper when he’s not worrying about germs, Pete Campbell when he’s drunk, even Paul Kinsey in his self-loathing boho fashion — seem to have an unsettlingly concrete vision of the future expanse of their life, or at least a vision they think is concrete, and that vision leads them to almost unfailingly derail anything in their life that could last forever.
Have you ever read The French Lieutenant’s Woman? There’s a moment in the book that you think is the ending: the engaged male protagonist, having become fascinated by the titular mystery femme, returns to his fiance and admits to an idle flirtation before settling down for a long and boring married life. It turns out that this is just the imagination of the male protagonist running wild, and having daydreamed this miserably realistic future, he races back to the French Lieutenant’s Woman and things happen. (It’s a great book.)
People experience moments like that all the time on this show, and so I’m left wondering exactly what to make about that ending. Does Don see the mess that Roger has made of his life, and right then sees his pregnant Grace Kelly lookalike wife and sees some minor part of the error of his ways? Or, as Goodman points out, is he possibly considering just what it would feel like to have everything, good and bad, out in the open? This is the second time in this season he’s told a complete stranger something incredibly personal that he’s never even told his wife. Does Don think it’s better to live a lie? Don’t Roger and Pete, two assholes who are pretty open about being assholes, enjoy the party a whole lot more than him?
Another note about Goodman: it’s kind of funny to talk about Weiner not using a “Steinbeckian sledgehammer” in an episode that quoted from TS Eliot and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I can’t complain because I kind of like Steinbeckian sledgehammers.
