Plasma Pool

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.

Guy walked into an advertising agency, and he never walked out. (Or walked anywhere, ever again.) As Guy McKendrick, Jamie Thomas King joined the expanding team of Mad Men guest stars who stroll in, dominate an entire episode, and then disappear (in this case, quite definitively). Still, although he was only uncrowned King for less than a couple hours, he made quite an impression. Flirting with Joan, man-flirting with Don, casually instigating shit with everybody but Harry Crane (lesson learned this season: British people like them their TV Department) … I don’t know about you, but I was totally convinced that he was going to stick around for awhile. You can’t say he didn’t pour his blood, sweat, and tears into Sterling Cooper.

British jokes, this episode had plenty! Just as Season 2 of The Wire taught us that that there’s a whole world of Polack humor lurking in the urban enclaves of the Eastern Seaboard, and Season 3 of Deadwood taught us about the lost race of Cornish people, so Season 3 of Mad Men has reminded us that, forty years ago, before the era of postracial humor and white-person self-deprecation, the most fertile ground for SFW naughty ethnic humor were our transatlantic neighbors. I’ve lost track of the number of references to the Revolutionary War, but Roger made a joke about the Union Jack. He also had the line of the night: somebody mentioned Guy might lose his foot, and Roger shook his head, “And right after he got it in the door.” Everybody had a good blood-drenched laugh about that.

Last night scored high on the Hitchcock Index, my mental measuring stick for how much casually surreal imagery the creators can slip into the show’s typically restrained aesthetic. During Guy’s presentation of the new org chart, he kept walking back and forth in front of the projecter, and his enlarged shadow kept blocking out the screen. I thought it was foreshadowing how completely Guy would dominate Sterling Cooper, but quite the opposite; if Guy lives on at Sterling Cooper, it’s only as the terrifying memory of a disaster better forgotten, like a Hiroshima silhouette. There was also the Phantom Barbie — so effortlessly organized onscreen, with that horrifying payoff from Sally’s POV, with Barbie sitting right across from her. A good week for Draper parenting, all the way around!

In corollary to the old writing adage Chekhov’s Gun, we now have Weiner’s Lawnmower: Don’t introduce a top-of-the-line John Deere personal transport mowing device before the first commercial break if you don’t intend to have a half-drunk secretary fail-out run it over the new boss’s foot. Poor Lois. First she tried flirting with a gay man; then she couldn’t even be the lucky girl who the gay man actually married; then she totally Chester Arthur’d herself out of secretary-ing for Don Draper, a job which historically brings people tremendous financial reward and/or office sugar daddies. Actually, now that I think about it, this was probably the best thing she could have ever done for Sterling Cooper. Did you notice how nobody even mentioned her after the accident? Were there no lawsuits for this kind of thing back then?

Other observation from this week: Apparently everyone but me had already guessed that Connie from behind the bar was actually Conrad Hilton. Mad Men has tended to avoid major historical figures (except via television or movies), but I’m wondering if that unofficial policy is going to change as (a) Sterling Cooper (and Don) become a larger part of the Mad Men-verse mediascape, and (b) the media and advertising in general become more central to the American way of life as the 1960s roll along. I can’t imagine someone incredi-famous like The Beatles (though they’re less than a year away from hitting Ed Sullivan — Season 4 premiere, perhaps?), but perhaps backroom dealmakers like Robert Moses, or visiting foreign artistes like Jean-Luc Godard?

All in all, I would say that this episode was one of the best ever — it felt like it had just the right mix of Draper House with Sterling Cooper. I’ll leave you to discuss Betty’s horrifically failed make-nice gift from little Gene to freaked-out Sally. I’m considering going back over the run of the season and trying to figure out how many episodes end with Don at home surrounded by his family in a moment of zen. You can tell that he wants so badly to be a good father, but he only seems to find the strength to do so when his job is so all-encompassing that he has no time for extracurricular extramarital activities. Don would be the perfect husband if he could only work all of the time.

What did you think about that scene between Don and Joan? Watching it was interesting, because it made me realize how surprisingly little these two central characters have ever had to do with each other. Sure, Joan was his replacement secretary between the foot murderer and the new Mrs. Sterling, but these two characters so completely represent/dominate their respective genders, it’s almost as if there were a magnetic field keeping them halfway across the office from each other at the same time. On a lesser show, their little moment would indicate some kind of affair in the future. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but isn’t this the second time in the season that Don has had a let’s-call-it-a-moment with a female coworker? Exactly what does that mean for Don Draper and society? Hell, come to think of it, he meets all his women through work! Rachel Mencken, Bobbie the agent/wife/talent manager … did we ever hear definitively how he met Midge?