In Which Loving You Is The Worst Way To Get To You

Lousy Affair

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect episode this weekend: it was vintage Mad Men, rich with everything that drew us in the early days. Romance was on the table, and it wasn't your garden variety Pete Campbell sleaze fest or Don Draper affair; it was about the deeper bonds, the ones that have been brewing and breaking since the very beginning. 

And like the early seasons, we find Don back in bed with Betty at their son Bobby's summer camp, and Peggy without a spot of make-up on her face, standing bewildered in the hallway of the agency, unsure of how to please. Even though Peggy is stronger this season than she's ever been, working with Don has put her back into an old rhythm, one we thought she'd avoid while working under Ted Chaough. But between Ted admitting his feelings for her then regretting it, and Don forcing her to choose between his work and Ted's, she ends up right where she's always been: a damn fine copywriter who happens to be a woman and who isn't sure which one she's supposed to be. 

Peggy doesn't play writer or woman any differently, because both sides of her want the same things. And why should she have to choose? Megan has started playing a new character in her soap opera — the twin sister of the character she was playing before. She's pressed by the director to distinguish the characters, but what stands between them is a blonde wig and a costume. "They're two halves of the same person and they want the same thing, but they're trying to get it in different ways," she explains. With the blonde wig and class she's a cheap Betty Draper, who glides into the episode as svelte and icily glamorous as we remember her from before. 

When Betty didn't feel desirable, we got a brief, exhilarating glimpse of her behind the broken zippers and flowing mumus. I've always been more tempted to psychoanalyze her rather than Don, but whatever differences lie between them, they face their unhappiness the same way: sex. Both of them are afraid of being abandoned — Betty if she's not beautiful enough, and Don if things become too comfortable. Afterwards, in bed, Betty reveals that she feels sorry for Megan because, "She doesn't know that loving you is the worst way to get to you." This, after she fishes for compliments on her appearance. 

Betty and Don are perfect for each other in the way that two incredibly fucked-up people can make each other somewhat less unhappy. She will never stop wanting a dangerous man, and while Henry will likely become a more powerful man, he's basically a softie. Betty is beautiful, certainly, but she's also got the sort of psychological dilemma that Don savors. Home is where the whorehouse is, and while she certainly keeps up the pretense of the perfect housewife, she's incapable of making a completely comfortable home. In other words, Megan's got her work cut out for her if she hopes to mend the distance between herself and her husband. 

Meanwhile, Peggy and Abe's utopian dream of gentrifying a rough neighborhood comes to a startling halt when Abe gets stabbed by local hooligans. He calls the policeman a "fascist pig" for asking what race the attackers belonged to, and is incredulous when Peggy takes the policeman's side. It's been the beginning of the end for them for a while. Peggy may have had her head in the clouds when Abe mentioned children, but ever since Ted Chaough came onto the scene, it's been a ticking time bomb with her long-locked hippie boyfriend. 

The shit really hits the fan when, paranoid because of conflict on the streets and rocks through bedroom windows, Peggy fashions a shiv with a broomstick and a kitchen knife and accidentally stabs Abe. It was a hilarious moment. You could see it coming a mile away, sort of like Betty and Don's affair, but the actuality was no less marvelous for all of the foreshadowing. The satisfaction I experienced in both moments was only mildly surpassed by Roger's "Bob Bunson" comment after we see Bob Benson in Joan's apartment wearing shorty shorts. 

Fatherhood comes naturally to Don in this episode as he accompanies Betty and Bobby to summer camp. Roger Sterling remains the token failure in this department after he takes his four-year-old grandson to Planet of the Apes and upsets his daughter. When he offers toys to Joan for Kevin, she announces that she'd rather her son think that Greg is his father. With Bob Benson hovering, however, it's likely he'll be playing with little Kevin on the beach before either Greg or Roger has a chance. 

Pete Campbell is basically ordered to get his life in order before considering taking on more responsibility at work, and Harry is still enterataining the delusion that he'll be made partner when "things calm down". Abe probably dies. Peggy consistently gets screwed even though she's the only one who doesn't expect to have everything handed to her, but if we know anything about Peggy, it's that when she reaches the end of her rope she makes good things happen for herself. That's the best we can hope for anyone, really. 

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about Mad Men. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing for This Recording here. 

"You Know" - Laura Marling (mp3)

"Master Hunter" - Laura Marling (mp3)

The new album from Laura Marling is entitled Once I Was An Eagle, and it is out today from Ribbon Records. You can purchase it here.

 

In Which The Timber Of Our Voice Is Important

666 Ideas

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

"Every time we get a car," said Don at the end of Sunday night's episode, "The Crash", "this place turns into a whorehouse." Powerful judgment coming from a man who, with many of his colleagues, spent a weekend in the office high on a cocktail of B vitamins and speed. As it turns out, the Chevy account has been every bit as much of a bitch as the Jaguar account before it, and the new SCDP/CGC mashup agency is sweating, crying and running their way through the halls trying to come up with a pitch that will satisfy their nitpicky clients.

But as the frequent flashbacks to Don's youth prove, the relationship with the whorehouse is complex, and not as easily dismissed as Don's bravado would have us believe. I think we're all sort of done with these peeks into Draper's past: we don't need to see a play-by-play of his Freudian dilemma as the whore who nurses him back to health from a severe fever subsequently initiates him in the ways of sex. If anything, these yawn-inducing scenes exist simply to illustrate Don's last point: a whorehouse is not an ideal habitat, but it's where your mother and your lover live. It's where there's comfort and excitement. It's sexy and dangerous and terrible for you, and it'll keep you — and your agency — afloat.

The episode was hard to follow, partly because it was supposed to be but mostly because so many divergent plotlines tried to sneak in the back door and make an appearance. Some of them, like Don's continuing obsession with his neighbor Sylvia and his habit of smoking outside the service door to her apartment at night, are quickly lost in the carnage.

Others, like the Draper children being held hostage in their apartment by an elderly black woman who wants to rob them blind, are so strange and misplaced that they're laughable. I swear, back-to-blonde Betty and her righteous indignation is what kept me from going crazy this week, as well as Peggy's serene, smiling response when Stan tells her she has a nice ass: 

"Thank you." 

For most of the episode, we're not sure what day of the week it is or what time of day it is, whether or not anybody has been sleeping or whether anyone is making any progress on Chevy. The work becomes an excuse for unbridled frenzy, as each character becomes a caricature of themselves on their best or worst days. Kenny Cosgrove, who opened the show in a speeding car full of drunk Chevy executives brandishing weapons and yelling, tap-dances in response to an inspirational speech from Don. He's got a foot injury from the car accident, but it's like it doesn't exist. In the business, injuries become assets, the worst possible work ends up inspiring the best. They're all taking it in the butt for Chevy. It's their job. 

We're forced to pay attention to Don, but his trip is the least interesting: he merely becomes a heightened version of himself on the job, pitching cheesy lines left and right and striding meaningfully in and out of rooms. "The timber of my voice is as important as the content," he yells at Kenny. "I need to be there in the flesh."

It's easy to assume the role of the hero in an environment where everyone admires you, but the sentiment doesn't extend far past the creative department. At home, Don is the father who doesn't give enough of a shit about his kids to come home and babysit them, or the husband who needs to be pitied and nurtured because Megan isn't sure how to communicate with him otherwise. It's a fair guess on her part, if mother/lover are as intricately entwined in his mind as it would appear. 

Disguises are important. If the strange black woman looting your dad's apartment in the middle of the night tells you she's your grandmother, should you believe her simply because you don't want to fall prey to racism? A granny holding up a bank is the oldest joke in the book, but this plotline felt forced, especially since it gave Sally an excuse to tell her father, "I don't know anything about you." We get it, Don's a mystery to everybody, even himself. Except he's not, so let's not waste Grandma Ida's time. It was really cool when Dawn the secretary had a super interesting life just waiting to be plundered for our entertainment. Now she's back to piling files on Don's desk.

Grandmother/thief, mother/lover, blonde Betty/brunette Betty, Don/Ted, Peggy/Ginsberg. Swapping roles comes easy to this lot, and the only person who is completely incapable of deception — Pete — clocked out early in the episode. We weren't asking for a high-speed chase when we asked Season 6 to get interesting. The frenetic, frequent drug use and its consequences (waking up? getting dressed? taking an uncomfortable elevator ride?) are distractions from the meatier, character-centric drama I appreciated so much in early Mad Men. It may seem like we're moving forward, but we're just running around in circles. 

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about Mad Men. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing for This Recording here.

"Asleep at the Wheel" - Jamaican Queens (mp3)

"Black Madonna" - Jamaican Queens (mp3)

The new album from Jamaican Queens is entitled Wormfood and it can be purchased here.

In Which We Leave When We're Satisfied

Their Dorothea Lange Faces

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

Neither Sylvia nor I have worn actual clothes for at least three episodes, which is perhaps why I felt a deep kinship with her this week. My excuse is infectious mononucleosis but she's just fed up with her husband, who recently quit his job as a heart surgeon because he is one of the most overdeveloped underdeveloped characters in television history.

When she cries to him that he hasn't been taking care of her, only himself, I bet she isn't thinking, gee, I'd really like to be locked in a hotel room as Don's sex slave for the next 48 hours. That would get me to put on my pantyhose this morning. When you're handed what you think you want on a silver platter, you should send it back roughly 90% of the time.

It wasn't troubling to me that Sylvia enjoyed the first half of the tryst. That Don assumes a woman wants to be cared for by being told that she exists for his pleasure is mildly offensive, but that Sylvia initially laps it up is her prerogative. I don't have the right to tell the woman what she does or does not want. Neither does Don, but his real mistake is to believe that the game can go on forever, that he can take a fantasy and impose it on her long after she has tired of it. 

This way of thinking created real problems for Don this week, as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and Cutler, Gleason & Chaough merge on geographical and personal levels. Ted Chaough isn't thrilled about Don's frequent disappearances, and Don's remedy is to get him stinking drunk while they brainstorm about margarine. 

Both Ted and Don love the business. They love it more than they love either of their respective companies or clients. They love it in the same way that Chevy loves cars: when the old methods or designs are getting tired or boring, it's time to move forward and make something new. Nobody really knows how it's going to work out practically but up until this point (almost) everyone has been going along with it because Ted and Don are visionaries and visionaries are fun and exciting to follow. 

The only problem is that a. it's incredibly difficult to put two visionaries in one room (or airplane) without eventually causing a massive power struggle and b. very few people are willing to keep on the rose-colored glasses anymore. Pete's a dick, but his continual discontent with Don has been the mercury measuring the mood of the rest of the office. As Pete's anger grows, it begins to spread to farther reaches of the board room.

It didn't take much for Joan to lose faith in Don after he lost the Jaguar account, for obvious reasons that become less obvious when you think about how no longer having to deal with Jaguar should have actually made her feel better. Peggy returns to SCDP with the same indulgent disapproval of Don that she's always had, except now she has a major crush on Ted Chaough. I'd make a list of the members of the creative department and whose side they'll surely fall on when lines are drawn, except Ted already fed them margarine toast so it seems like overkill. 

I'm really enjoying Bob Benson's miniature subplots with each of the partners: he is sneaking his way in, although his purposes remain unknown. He got Joan to stand up for him in an operations meeting just by accompanying her to urgent care and by bringing her baby an age-inappropriate gift. I don't know what it is about him that makes all the sirens in my head go off but at least we know he's not very smart. He started by attempting to butter (margarine?) up the male partners when he should have just started with Joan in the first place, and no, not because she's a woman, but because she fucking runs the place. 

The only black character we've seen since the MLK episode was, in Pete's words, "a two-hundred pound Negro prostitute", which... well, doesn't give Weiner much of a vote of confidence in that department. Even Dawn, Don's secretary who is secretly the next Joan, only gets mentioned briefly by Peggy. I know an episode is only forty-five minutes long, but really, do we have to see so many shots of Sylvia's pajamas? Even I've been getting dressed in the morning. 

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about the blue line. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing for This Recording here.

"Bullet" - Young Wonder (mp3)

"Time" - Young Wonder ft. Sacred Animals (mp3)