Mad Men 6.5: America’s Decay Escalates, Don Starts Rebuilding
A slight return to form for season six, which dumped tragic history in the laps of layabouts and forced everyone to think about the future.
Mad Men is in full swing (wink, 1960s joke). Each week we’ll take a look at who’s shilling what to who; follow our recaps here. Obviously, spoilers.
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MAD MEN CLIENT MEETING
6.5 — ‘The Flood’
THE PRODUCT:
Personal Insurance. Planet of the Apes. Tragedy. Comfort.
THE PITCH:
“I was trying to communicate without words, but it’s not working.” So says Randall, some round-eyed, whispering square of a space cadet that Roger ushers into the mix. He dreams of molotov cocktails and coupons, devastation sitting atop opportunity. He also sees every animal in the world crying inside a single tear, so either Roger’s picked up some goofball-downing friends on his last freaky trip or this guy truly is a visioneering traveller. He explains to the office, “The heavens are telling us to change.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is shot, and the country erupts in riots. Everyone reacts, no one is surprised, and we flit through the characters’ days as they switch and flick through the endless news updates. Henry Francis has to hang with the mayor, who’s only looking for photo ops. Peggy sits back while Abe hurdles into the unrest. Pete’s stranded city-side, in the apartment that sadness rented, his wife and kid bundled up in the ‘burbs — and he pops that can of frustration all over Harry Crane’s “bona-fide racist” face.
Meanwhile, Ginsburg’s out dining with a teaching student, admitting virginity and ordering soup — a terrible first date combo. His father set it up, so scared is he that his boy will be partnerless on life’s ark when the floods come. But check out how SCDP’s own self-proclaimed spaceman perks up when face-to-face with Randall’s dilated prophecies; this little neurotic just needs someone who thinks outside the cubicle. Where’s Annie Hall when you need her? (Oh, and Stan gets the giggles.)
Meanwhile, as Megan bundles snot-nosed Gene and just plain snotty Sally off to a vigil in the park, Don spots an out and skedaddles with his “sick” son to the multiplex. Don’s only interests (outside unattainable women) are work, the cinema and his extra-marital book clubs, so it makes sense to bond with Bobby in the back row of the movies. Or, I guess, just let Dr Zaius play baby-sitter for a repeat feature.
Either way, a distraught big-screen Charlton Heston allows the father/son duo to broach the topic of that maniac race called humanity and its habit of blowing it all to hell. Turns out kids are totally capable of empathy and random non-sequiturs, so Don’s heart explodes, as he discovers he loves two out of his three kids (opinions on Baby Gene still pending, at least until he can chat about sci-fi). Does Don believe the children are our future? He usually acts like they’re a bunch of damn dirty apes, but his expression, all aghast, in the broadcast din of the country’s fires, may just show him waking up to the world they’re inheriting.
A coupon, a commercial, a billboard – they’re all whispering and whispering and screaming that change is possible. And then life happens, and it pre-empts the primetime schedule, and you have to think about something else. Maybe it’s too late for Pete to go home. Maybe Henry can do things differently. Maybe Don can be present in the lives of his loved ones. What do you do at the end of a shameful, shameful day? What do you do when the waters clear?
THE TAGLINE:
“There’s trouble ten blocks away — they’re probably on pins and needles.”
OLD BUSINESS:
Everyone reached out to the African-American in their lives, from secretaries to busboys to ushers. Blergh. But no television show can be all things. Mad Men isn’t about the most successful, or the most creative, or the most forward-thinking ad firm in the ’60s — it’s run by two old rich WASPs and an ever slipping emotional savant. It’s particular and specific. They’re not going to hire up a Benetton ad’s worth of diversity to appease our retrospective glare, and Matt Weiner and the creatives behind the show only owe us the stories they want to tell. So maybe this isn’t the place to explore the black perspective of the MLK shooting and riots. And yet, for a show that cannily explores sexism, and anti-Semitism, and post-war attitudes on international business, and every other little societal hiccup and blemish, you’d think they could do a little more with the country’s defining moral corruption and eventual semi-redemption.
NEW BUSINESS:
Just as you thought Abe was getting too shagged out for the upwardly mobile Miss Olsen, he goes and mentions kids and Peggy makes 27 different facial expressions in under a minute. Count them! She even seems vaguely aware about the potential horrible hubbub her new emphatically hair-parted employer is going to make. “Everyone remembers my wife Nan? Shut up Nan, SHUT UP!” Teddy Chaugh, wonder boss, hates his wife and loves staring at Peggy in mood lighting. Good old, increasingly savvy, Peggy. Poor old Nan.
(And if you enjoyed the mercenary drive and awkward rudeness of Peggy’s double-flush real estate agent, you should try and catch the comedic-stylings of actress Lennon Parham sometime. Here she is, playing a distractingly inappropriate special ed teacher on a Comedy Bang Bang podcast.)
ON THE NEXT EPISODE OF MAD MEN:
Roger is rumpled in bed. Ted will continue something later. There’s a distinct lack of ties and Cooper is in a sweater vest. Could the next episode of Mad Men cover the devastating instigation of… Casual Friday?