In Which We Dance With The One Who Brought Us

Catch Up

by KARA VANDERBIJL

Mad Men
creator Matthew Weiner

The devil has joined Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the form of Bob Benson (James Wolk). Last week he stood in an elevator with Don long enough to make the hairs rise on the back of my neck, and Sunday night he bought toilet paper for Pete Campbell. I'm not sure what it is about him, but anybody who seems squeaky clean and has no function in the narrative except to take notes in client meetings and make other characters raise quizzical brows in his direction is scary enough to make me run in the other direction. 

Honestly, it would not take much to give us the jitters at this point; the discomfort introduced last week only grew in this episode, garnished with two well-placed allusions to North Korea. That Mad Men evokes our contemporary struggles has been apparent from the beginning, but the distance between then and now was obliterated with Dr. Rosen's wry, "No one took Fidel Castro seriously," right before he rushed off to another surgery. It's an old trick, confronting our fears in fiction. Is learning blind better than observing a lesson and ignoring it?

Similarly, we sense that it is Bob Benson who will watch and take notes as the agency goes up in flames. I half expect to see him slinking around corners with his legal pad and pen, sitting on left shoulders and whispering in ears. He'll be an enabler, opening windows for others to jump out of, pouring that extra glass of whiskey.

Sorry for all the doom and gloom, but how could I think otherwise? Two brief flashbacks to a young Don Draper unveil a lurid fragment of his piecemeal past. That he was raised for a time in a brothel seems too simple an explanation for his relationship with women. I would be more tempted to blame it on a desire to compensate for the many awkward years he spent in homespun with a bowl haircut. Just when it was getting so easy to hate him, they throw this curveball! I had a few teary moments remembering that he watched his father and mother die, that he saw his uncle demand sex from his stepmother for rent money. Childhood is one thing that should be kept absolutely sacred. (I also cried during a Purina commercial, so let's take all of this with the requisite grain of salt.) 

Although Don told Dr. Rosen's wife, Sylvia (Linda Cardellini), that he didn't want to sleep with her anymore in the new year, their liaison only intensifies. No lost love between neighbors! If he felt any guilt before it was feigned; Sylvia's own intense shame stems from her Cathollc girlhood, and it is this part of her that Megan appeals to when she confides to Sylvia about her recent miscarriage. The irony behind Megan trying to convince Sylvia to watch her TV show isn't lost on us and certainly isn't lost on Sylvia, who's cooking up enough drama in the Draper marriage to fill an Italian opera. When both of the women in your life are at breaking point, Don, the choice is obvious: go for the one who doesn't want to have a baby. 

It's a shame about Megan, because right before we find out about her miscarriage, she's firing the maid and is incandescently hilarious about it. Let's not forget that not so long ago, Betty also resorted to firing the help when she was at her wits' end. We get the feeling that Megan won't be around for long, but that she'll remain a face on the screen, present whenever Don is hungover in his second sad bachelor pad and turns on the daytime soaps.

Affairs and betrayals continue to be at the forefront of the episode as Pete and Trudy Campbell flirt their way around their suburban neighbors. Pete is the only one who goes through with it and invites one of the blonde neighbors for a tryst in his apartment in the city. Like all of Pete's women, she's much too innocent and trusting for her own good (e.g. "I'll park my car in front of the driveway instead of in the driveway so you'll know I'm thinking about you"). When she gets pummeled by her husband, she runs to the Campbells for help. Trudy, we find, had no delusions about her husband's fidelity, but she also won't be made into a fool in front of her neighbors and throws him out, but only so far. She is determined to ruin him, but refuses to divorce him. This may have been the first time I admired Trudy Campbell, but I'm sure it won't be the last. 

At the agency, things have taken a turn for the comical; Jaguar's sleazy salesman Herb (Gary Basaraba) wants more local ads as opposed to the glittering national campaign, but Don won't give it to him; why is it that I foresee Joan paying for this obstinance? The Heinz Baked Beans client brings in his colleague, who's in charge of Ketchup, for a visit, but reveals that he doesn't want Don and the crew to do anything for Ketchup because he's got a chip in his shoulder. Stan foolishly reveals this new development to Peggy, who in turn reveals it to her boss, who in turn wants to seduce Ketchup over to Cutler, Gleason and Chaough.

I'm honestly surprised Peggy didn't see it coming, as beautifully cutthroat as she has become in this business. When her secretary reminds her that she should be kind to the writers who work under her, it's a bittersweet moment; we realize that, as much as she has come to resemble Don, she's still trying to please. 

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 twitters here. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here.

"Singers and the Endless Song" - Iron & Wine (mp3)

"Caught In The Briars" - Iron & Wine (mp3)

In Which This Is Our Funeral

New Don

by KARA VANDERBIJL 

Mad Men 
creator Matthew Weiner

We left Don Draper in a bar making eyes at two women over an old-fashioned, a scene that is now as familiar to us as pretty much everything else he does. Yet this was a significant moment. Up until those last few minutes, Season 5 was a loop of repetitive images: Peggy feeling underappreciated, Megan crying, Betty eating, Roger bribing everyone to do his bidding, and the drinking. Oh, the drinking. But then Peggy quit Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. And Lane hanged himself. And Don, who had been frighteningly faithful to Megan all season long, suddenly slipped back into his old familiar skin. We don’t know for sure whether or not he cheated that night, but that isn’t the point. The point is that the pattern broke.

It sucks a little bit when you realize that even your favorite shows have their limitations. It isn’t that Sunday’s premiere was boring, but I will say that I would have preferred if the entire thing had been a shot of Sally sassing her mother over a half-consumed jar of Smuckers in the Francis family mansion. Sally, who in her pre-teen bloom resembles nothing as much as a young bloggeur, calls her mother by her first name now and twists phone cords around her finger. She is the only one, at first blush, who has absolutely nothing to worry about. Even baby Gene should have some residual anxiety about his lack of screen time, especially since everyone still thinks he’s a baby. Shouldn’t he be at least 8 by now?

Matthew Weiner makes a point of concealing what year it is, but judging by the hairstyles and Jetson-esque costumes the ‘70s are right around the corner if not upon us. It is Christmas. Carols surf the radio waves in Hawaii where Don and Megan are vacationing. Of course, it’s for business: Sheraton wants SCDP to sell their latest hotel experience. Only Don seems to understand that success in an advertising career depends entirely on the amount of pleasure you experience on a regular basis. He’s reading Dante on the beach while Megan gets asked for autographs. Obviously, times have changed. Everyone looks older, but Don just looks tan.

If his series of reinvented selves have driven the series thus far, then it's his inability to change that closed last season and opens this one. The people who once tightly surrounded him have scattered. When he isn't writing the script, he hasn't got much to say, which is why we have to listen to Megan talk about how much better sex is when you're high for the first fifteen minutes of the episode. She is radiant and he doesn't give a shit. Like Betty and Peggy, she has moved so far out of his line of vision that when he looks at her, he's only looking at a past version of himself that he is no longer interested in embodying. What Don hasn't figured out, but what we're beginning to understand, is that none of this is about him.

I'm so proud of Peggy, even though I like her a little bit less with each season. Is it sacreligious to say that? She's kicking ass and taking names at Cutler, Gleason and Chaough, but it seems like she is still unhappy. I am waiting for her to become who she is instead of who she thinks she wants to be, that is, a female rival/foil for Don, who literally doesn't even remember her. Her boyfriend Abe lost last season's leather jackets in favor of a bad Jesus or John Lennon impersonation, but he's the muse behind her work and brings her sandwiches, so I suppose he can stick around.

Altogether the crew at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is a little shaggier and saggier. Stan has become a pothead which isn't any great surprise to anyone. Kenny's hair is parted differently, and Pete has sideburns. They appeared to repeat the same lines from some previous episode. When Don chides them for trivializing the word "love" in an ad for oven cleaner, I miss Peggy so much it hurts. They've replaced her with an older woman whose name I didn't catch, but here's hoping they give her more camera time than baby Gene.  At least now there is a grand staircase leading to a second floor and so many employees that Don can't keep them all straight. Business is booming, but for how long? A sense of unease filters through even the most idyllic vistas.

It's not just the riots, the misunderstood hippies, or Henry Francis' awful Christmas sweater. Peggy and Don can't pitch the ads they want to pitch because their best ideas are all suddenly about death. Vietnam is sending men home in bags. When Don suggests that Sheraton capitalize on the idea of shedding one's skin on the shores of Hawaii and launching off into the great unknown, the clients aren't the only ones thinking about suicide.

Lane Pryce's death last season was just the beginning. Underneath the luster of success looms impending doom. Don and Megan's doorman has a heart attack which he barely survives. Roger Sterling's mother dies, throwing him into the only version of an existential crisis he is capable of experiencing; the women in his life file by. He weeps when the man who shines his shoes also ends up dead. When Don stands by his office window and recalls the shores of Hawaii, I keep thinking he's going to jump. If the opening credits are any indication, he has a big fall coming. 

He's having another affair. It's with his downstairs neighbor, Dr. Rosen's wife, which wouldn't be so bad except that we spend the entire episode thinking that Don and Dr. Rosen have developed a friendship. I'm not sure I really want to watch Don anymore. He has moved to the periphery of the room, has had too much to drink on an empty stomach and sleeps through the most important parts. Betty just became a brunette and she's big and bold and I'm sure Sally has a picture of a boyfriend or an unfinished novel hidden in some girlish sock drawer somewhere. Megan is gracing a soap-opera screen four nights a week and Peggy is inspired. His end is just their beginning. 

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

In Which We Give You A .Gif

Refresh

by KARA VANDERBIJL  

Even on my best days I am a series of repetitive gestures, an assembly line that finishes the evening in pajamas on my apartment floor, up to the chin in chocolate milk. These gestures are a hodge-podge of embarrassing human habits and internet inside jokes. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don’t press snooze but in this defiance to laziness I am regular. I look at my bowl of oatmeal in the morning and feel the contents of my belly shift low on the grade. I suppose it makes sense that in the morning, when I am least conscious, I should brush my teeth in the same tired circular motions. I’ve perfected these gestures down to the very minute in which they are performed, so that I can continue sleeping in my brain while darkness lifts off the city and traffic picks up. 

My street smells like bacon when I step out the front door because the breakfast joint on the opposite corner just opened for business. The same two gentlemen sit on the same two seats in the train and talk (presumably) about the same facts. Why do I take pleasure in these things? Isn’t this the very stuff of ennui, the boring picket-fence existence that can only culminate in divorce, disaster, and early death by artificially-sweetened diabetic coma? I am an unabashed creature of habit — why try to make something “better” when it is already so very good? — which may have something to do with my deeply structured days, down to moments of calculated madness.  

Some of what gives people the deepest physical and psychological pleasure comes from repetitive motion. If you start rubbing your eyes right now, I guarantee that you won’t stop until you have fallen asleep or died, whichever comes first. Should I even mention the complex bodies of flavor that explode in your mouth the more you masticate? And sex, of course, the moment of orgasm almost overshadowed by the pleasure of repeated friction.  

I have to believe the Ancient World had some way of duplicating their pleasures, mirroring their experiences, revisiting emotions. What is catharsis but the repetitive performance of profound fears, meant to move the audience into some sort of controlled, miniature insanity?  The oral tradition was simply a jury-rigged copy machine for cultures that had not yet developed toner. Still, the ancients’ collective memory was vast. What would it have been like to live in a time when you were never guaranteed to see something more than once? (Including your best friend, who may at any point be carried off by barbarian hordes.)  

The invention of the VCR hastened the advent of cultural immortality. Not only did it become a way for parents to perpetuate an already overly-long and embarrassing childhood (especially in front of high-school crushes, college friends, and eventual love interests), but its crowning glory was without a doubt its ability to rewind the magnetic tape inside. Within seconds, you could return to a past sequence of frames and watch it again. (This process is also known as how I ruined my Anne of Green Gables box sets within a few years of obtaining them.) Before the cassette tape there was no such luxury; once simply had to be enough.  

When I was a child and briefly insomniac, my parents used to come into my bedroom and rub my back gently while I waited for sleep. The gesture was incredibly soothing and during these nocturnal visits, I couldn’t go to sleep because I wanted to enjoy every minute of the back rub. Waves of panic would wash over me, in rhythm to their sleepy hands, when I remembered that they would eventually tire of soothing me and return to their own bed. This worry made it impossible for me to fall asleep.  

I had similar phobias about my favorite foods, whenever they were served for dinner either at our home or in a stranger’s. I would watch over the bowl or platter like a hawk before the meal to make sure nobody snuck a handful or a bite before everyone had sat down, before everyone had a fair chance to get their share. I would eat the food as quickly as I could, so that I could get a second helping before anybody else. My greatest fear was that I would miss out on the repetition, that the last spoonful would be claimed by another person.  

Fear of missing out on something, whether it’s a material good or an experience, can cause repetitive behaviors. Addiction seeks to replicate a past euphoria, a previous sequence of frames that existed before the hangover or the overdose or the alienation. Be kind, rewind. Believing that there is not enough of a good thing to go around is a particular neurosis, one that thrives on habit, on going through motions, on completing a set of rituals that lead without fail to a specific result. Repetition ensures pleasure because if I’ve already experienced it, the memory of it will infuse every subsequent reinterpretation, whether or not I actually enjoy these simulacra as much as I enjoyed the original.  

If I can repeat any pleasure at any moment, pleasure becomes repetitive. I am less sensitive to it, and it eventually morphs into the very stream of mundane events which caused me to seek it in the first place. I am still not sure whether my enjoyment of something increases the more I am exposed to it or the more I must anticipate it.  

My coworker and I have begun to act out popular .gifs in response to questions or else, sometimes, within the stream of normal conversation. It is not an affectation, precursor to Tourette’s or even particularly clever. The .gif embodies and tests this debate; it takes plot elements, personal confessions, and pretty much any other weird thing you can find online out of their original context and places them on the surface of our collective consciousness. Are you happy about the donuts your coworker brought today, the aesthetic cocktail you’re about to enjoy, the concert you went to last night? Then scream “Bees!”, obviously. Navigating the train platform during rush hour calls for none other than this gem. It's not that difficult to say no, as long as you have a good sense of humor. Everything is so beautiful; so, so beautiful. Honey, puhleeze. Naturally, it's all about the queen.

And the list goes on. Almost nothing is spared the .gif treatment. Is it better to know a .gif’s original context? Does it make the joke funnier? A .gif is telling us part of a story; it would say more, but it can’t go any further. Complex context is reduced to a single movement. Like a broken record, it’s caught on a portion of a song, catering to attention spans the length of a blink, a scroll down.

How many hours have I spent clicking Refresh, picking at the virtual scab, waiting for something new to pop up and occupy me? Concerned as I am to miss out on something big, I have not yet realized that the reward is rarely worth this endless repetition. 

Kara VanderBijl is the managing editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about embodiment. She twitters here.

"Kronos" - Keaton Henson (mp3)

"In The Morning" - Keaton Henson (mp3)