TV « In Which Mad Men Whispers To Us Over and Over Again »
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 10:31AM 
Keep Some Of Your Tools In The Toolbox
by MOLLY LAMBERT
Peggy Olson got laid you guys! And nothing terrible happened. It's the lesson every Catholic girl must learn, preferably not after dropping the love child of the less sexy Head Of Accounts, the married one, the neurotic one, the one who has won no awards for his evocative New England set short stories.
Ann-Margaret in 1963 is like Megan Fox right now. Telling a "normal" girl that's what is sexy is retarded, even if it's true. Lots of things are sexy. Most of them are less glaringly "sexy" than Ann-Margaret or Megan Fox. Peggy didn't score because she channelled Ann Margaret. It's because she's gonna slam dunk the Patio account.
Sometimes a girl just has to venture outside her Brooklyn apartment, go to a bar, and make small talk with someone not necessarily as smart as she is but certainly passably attractive enough to go home with. Sometimes a girl just needs to have sex.
In the first two episodes of this season Mad Men has done the fanservice of giving sex scenes to the two characters most desperately in need of them, Peggy and Sal. After the nonstop Bon Temps Bang Bus that is True Blood, it's nice to come down to a level where sex is not as easy as wandering down to your local Maenad orgy bacchanalia.
Meanwhile adulthood is a total drag, as Don decides that Betty insist on taking in her dementia suffering father. Knowing Don, he will be out there high fiving crotches with stewardesses like the premiere's Slutty Betty in no time. Real depressed Betty's life will probably continue to get worse, given another reason to be confined to the house. But hey, after you take the kids to Tarrytown they can get a Cookiepuss at Carvel!
"I can see by what you carry that you come from Tarrytown"
Don is going to sell the new Penn Station based on the idea that it belongs to the future, and setting up the corporate fantasy bonanza of the 1964 New York World's Fair. The new Penn Station will be ugly and everyone will hate it until enough time has passed that the people have forgotten the old one. Such is progress.
Who knows what the future holds? Who among us wants to believe that our decisions influence our lives? Where the fuck is Joan Holloway? What's going on with her douchebag doctor husband? You know Joan would be asking this shit right off the bat, because she is a good gossip. Unrape my heart.
And no, Ann-Margret can't sing. Or she couldn't sing well enough for "Bye Bye Birdie." But who cares? She's adorable. It's gonna sell truckloads of Patio diet soda.
Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here. She twitters here.
"Moon Over Miami" — Sarah Vaughan (mp3)
"Crazy He Calls Me" — Sarah Vaughan (mp3)
"Stormy Weather" — Sarah Vaughan (mp3)
THIS RECORDING IS AN INTERNET NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK
Reader Comments (7)
Love the Steely Dan reference.
Love the Patton Oswalt reference.
Also, is it just me, or do Peggy and Pete seems like robots discovering what it's like to be human?
Whoa whoa whoa everybody just calm down, Ann-Margret can sing, she just chose not to sing very well.
I just saw Tony Curtis in the men's room!
She didn't have sex with him though because he didn't have a trojan. They just did mouth intercourse.
Mad Men is pretty much all mouth intercourse.
Ah, but I was a great star once, young and beautiful.
Surely you remember me in some of your favorite films!
http://www.powwmedia.com/pennsy/media.htm
I just want to say that "Bon Temps Bang Bus" just might be the feel-good phrase of the year.
That is all.