In Which It Was The Best of Times For The Astral Projection That Is Don Draper

ML's Life in Advertising

When appraised by trained scientists Molly Lambert (ML to her staff, Marly Guthrie to folk fans, Lambo to people who don't know her brother) was determined to be composed of 22 percent Pete Campbell, 51 percent Dick Whitman (I cannot call him by his fake name) and 17 percent Bethany Van Nuys. It is a verifiable fact (I think this was established after some Caltech bong rips) that we are all at least 12 percent Bethany Van Nuys and some of us are over 80 percent Bethany Van Nuys. This is getting off topic, but the record for most Bethany Van Nuys was recently set by our own Will Hubbard. In the immortal and alcohol soaked words of Lucille Bluth, isn't it fun to talk this way?

Although some suggested a book version of Molly's informed journaling/cultural critique of Matthew Weiner's ideas about how to treat his employees, how could the print medium capture a mind spinning through a dream world of the past and readjusting it according to her own life struggles? Enjoy the season so far:

Get Your Own Damn Coffee

Don, finally ready to be emasculated, goes over to Peggy's place and gives her a weird sort of condescending lecture about how he wants her to come because he views her as part of himself? Basically it's still all about Don. Then he claims they both understand personal trauma because la la la secret baby/identity. Don tells Peggy that even if she negs him a third time, he will spend the rest of his life trying to get back in her work-pants. Notice how the women were wearing pants this episode? Subtle.

A Very Draper Christmas

A Don Draper with no swag is a Don Draper that's a hell of a lot easier to root for. Desperation is never a good look, but "divorced loser Don" is certainly more relatable than "absurdly suave Don." Who among us hasn't passive aggressively done something incredibly hurtful to somebody we didn't really mean to hook up with?

California Dreams

Don's side trip to California is also the return of Deus Ex Machin-Anna Draper, a character whose lack of interior function belies a severe bone cancer eating her polio riddled fictional bones from the inside. Seriously, what is the deal with Anna Draper? Why does she pimp out Don/Dick to her stupid proto-hippie niece so hard? What exactly does she get out of being so selflessly mothering to Don? A shitty paint job?

Did You Get Pears?

Peggy's cool downtown party was perfect. I swear I went to that party last weekend. The guy with the bear head turned out to be a bear. Telling a lesbian that your boyfriend rents your vagina is the kind of flirty neg cool art dykes live for.

Sally Masturbates to the Man from U.N.C.L.E. And Is Later Incepted

There is no change without acknowledgement. Maybe even Don is ready to admit that the "old" Don Draper, which was Dick Whitman's conception of a sort of ideal man, kind of fucking sucks. Since that life phase is over anyway, why not let go of it completely so that a better more zen Don Draper might emerge? It's like Inception.

A Heaping Bowl of Life Cereal

There's an old saw about telling smart girls they're hot and hot girls they're smart, but the real point Peggy was making was that women getting compartmentalized into those categories, which are always enforced by the likes of Douchebag Art Director Guy, has absolutely nothing to do with what they are really like as human beings. Unfortunately it seemed like Peggy's attempt to demonstrate that the Madonna/whore construct is a falsehood/duality didn't exactly go over/make a dent in that guy's thick skull beyond giving him a confused and unattended to erection. Let's just say that sometimes it's hard to have arguments about serious things with total idiots.

Don & Peggy: A One Act

I think the theme of this season especially, as Don mentioned, is the line between brilliance and stupidity and how it is very often just chance that makes some people into life's winners and others into losers. I've got excuses for everything on Mad Men, except for the ghost of Anna Draper, and the line about leaving the door open (groan). I hope Peggy's doofusy fiancé is gone to the Bobbi Barrett character consignment pile.

Draper Starts a Journal

The gender wars, like the wars on terror and drugs, are endless but also imaginary. For the current battles in the gender wars, you needed to tune over to MTV, where Kanye West and Taylor Swift were greco-roman oil wrestling for control of America's heart at the VMAs. Based purely on taste metrics, Kanye won. And like Peggy Olson in tonight's episode, Taylor just made herself look like a humorless bitch by comparison.

Miss Blankenship's Empire

The only dude who handled his shit in the face of crisis was Pete Campbell. Somehow that little fucker remains the most feminist minded of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce frat pack, if only by default, and he is a rapist! Is Mad Men going to gradually indoctrinate the straight men who idolize it with feminism? Don't mind if they do!

You can read all of This Recording's Mad Men content here.

The Ads of Mad Men

It's Just Nice To Be Close To The Ones You Love

"Remember When" - Gucci Mane ft. Ray J (mp3)

"Weirdo" - Gucci Mane (mp3)

"Trap Talk" - Gucci Mane (mp3)

In Which I Would Have My Secretary Do It But She's Dead

I Hate It There!

by MOLLY LAMBERT 

Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy? - bell hooks

Why indeed bell hooks! The most radical thing you can do as a man is renounce sexism, in all its many insidious forms, so why do so many people avoid thinking about it by claiming they are "not political" (as Peggy did early on this episode)? Is it the misguided belief that feminism will take food out of men's mouths and jobs out of their hands? Civil rights for all will just make everyone's lives better and easier. 

Sally Draper went all Alice In The Cities on Don. She hopped off the train from Ossining with a dream and her divorce and daddy issues, little hobo in training that she is. What's scarier to a man than his son turning out like he did? His daughter turning out that way! Nobody's good with tantrums. They're like Brooklyn tornadoes.

Don's reaction was to force every woman in sight into a care-taking position. Dr. Faye called him on his bullshit, and everyone in the audience cheered. Don Draper is slowly learning the lesson every alpha male must learn: It's not emasculation if you like it!

When you fuck up, and we all fuck up, the best thing you can do is cut the bullshit and just say you're sorry and mean it. And then, you know, try not to do it again. Some people never learn this lesson. Lindsay Lohan still has not learned this lesson, and she is on her ninety thousandth attempt, and all her go-rounds are in the public eye.

There are actual ways to stop your life from becoming Groundhog Day. Recognize and pay attention to your specific issues and problems and neuroses, whatever they may be for you. Addressing them can be painful, but emotional pain will not kill you, and it will also be fruitful. Ignoring them, or trying to, will make things infinitely worse.

I fully predicted Miss Blankenship being this season's tractor accident (tracctident). Before she kicked the bucket she also explicitly referred to Don and Peggy's S&M dynamic, which I called out in my recap of "The Suitcase." Ms. Blankenship also pointed out that Dr. Faye breezes past her because she's pushy, and Don likes pushy. 

The problem with Betty is that aside from being really beautiful, she has no sense of humor and isn't very smart or interesting. It takes some people a lifetime to realize that superficial attraction is just part of a varied spectrum of kinds of attractiveness. There's mental compatibility, which can be entirely platonic. Then there are blends of both kinds of attraction, with the obvious ideal being equally high levels of both.

Don and Dr. Faye seem highly compatible on both fronts. Although Don still seems likely to dive-bomb the relationship by sleeping with Megan the secretary (if tonight was foreshadowing), because Mad Men doesn't want us to have nice things and Don is probably still too much of a McNulty not to do something stupid and short-sighted.

One thing Kanye West and Taylor Swift have in common in their unfailing belief that chicks just want to get married. Lots of people really still think that! It is easy to forget how not very far we have come! We still put unmarried women on the covers of tabloids to shame them for being single, as if it is something to shame them about! You know what is way lamer than being single? Being in a bad/boring relationship.

Man that guy Abe goofing on Peggy sure was lame, wasn't he? Maybe they set him up as a counterpart to Joey to demonstrate how all the new cool guys just have new strategies for being misogynistic and dismissive of girls. Peggy's shift from being impressed that the guy thought she was cool and smart to being disgusted that he insisted on trying to prove he was cooler and smarter than her was relatable.

The main teaching of feminism is to just actually listen to what women are saying. Don't base anything on your preconceived ideas of what "women" are like. Women are human beings, no more sympathetic or moral than anyone else. It's a case by case basis. Peggy got the most radicalized this episode, with Don a close second.

Peggy is radicalized twice, after she pitches Harry Belafonte to the boys and realizes she is complicit. Then when she makes the inevitable connection between the black civil rights movement and the burgeoning women's movement that Abe describes facetiously, the women's movement being borne partially out of the sexism and disenfranchisement of female civil rights pioneers by the male leadership.

Finding out that counterculture movements can be just as sexist as the establishment (if not even more sexist, since they should theoretically be more liberal) is one of the ways women find out that as long as they accept the status quo, they're always going to be treated and judged differently than men in otherwise identical situations. 

Don Draper is learning that you can't just cowboy up in every situation. Roger Sterling (for all his constant macho talk) more or less hid behind Joan when they got held up. Roger is turning into an old man, and his life is becoming a Philip Roth novel. There was so much slapstick in this episode. There has been tons of slapstick this season.

Aryan superman Ken Cosgrove said something that seemed to imply he understood duality (that one can be both professional and an amateur simultaneously) and rejected dichotomy, but then he more or less told Peggy to shut the fuck up and let the men handle it. Ken Cosgrove and Peggy might be my OTP, but I could be projecting.

Last week Mad Men crossed universes with The Sopranos when we found out Dr. Faye is a gangster's daughter. This week it crossed universes with The Wire to show the gritty unbelly of New York City: CRIME! Who else really believed Roger and Joan might never fuck again? You got me this time, Weiner! That zipper sound cue was LOL!

Boardwalk Empire even hired Omar and they still couldn't effectively incept The Wire, because all coolness is instantly melted by ragtime, or because the show was just kind of an empty suit in general. Scorsese made it look beautiful, but (unlike Mad Men) the characters were all more or less exactly who they appeared to be. I hope it improves?

Also sorry HBO but Boardwalk Empire had hella shades of Newsies. I'd be happy to buried in that awesome Atlantic City boardwalk set yall built though. What a beautiful art installation that is. I hear it cost eighteen million dollars. Somebody tell me where it is and how to get there. When I go, I'm taking everything interesting with me.

Every man having an inner mechanic is useful for analyzing how patriarchy functions. Don and Ken Cosgrove implied that they inherently know how to fix anything since they are real men. Then Don spent the whole episode attempting to get every woman in the office to fix things for him with both Sally and the former Miss Blankenship, effectively demonstrating that he doesn't know how to do a goddamn thing.

The only dude who handled his shit in the face of crisis was Pete Campbell. Somehow that little fucker remains the most feminist minded of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce frat pack, if only by default, and he is a rapist! Is Mad Men going to gradually indoctrinate the straight men who idolize it with feminism? Don't mind if they do!

Hey if in 2010 Ron Artest can make it acceptable for pro athletes to talk about mental health issues, and 50 Cent can post cheesecake pictures for his gay fans, who's to say we can't keep widening the boundaries of masculinity to include all the non-normative iterations of it that actually exist? Even heterosexual men can be queer as long as they are willing to examine their masculinity and think critically about what it means.

Matthew Weiner can't resist a terrible gag for the martini. The whole "executive secretaries are astronauts" motif was hammered on the head a bit too literally for my taste with that closing shot. That said, I applaud Mad Men for taking risks like the blackout time lapse, so I can't be too angry with it for continuing to take risks and occasionally failing at things like Don's voiceover last week, because that is the hazard/payoff of risks. If it gave us what we want all the time it wouldn't be as great.

Not that my viewing party didn't cheer at the screen when Don decided not to write in his gournal this week. So he did know that it was terrible? Is it going to figure into the season's plot at all, à la Dick Whitman's box of secrets? Was Sally bluffing about not knowing it was rum and she was just trying to get Don blackout drunk so she could live in his apartment foreverrrrrr? Can you really even blame her? She's a boss!

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls and twitters. You can find last week's Mad Men review here.

"A Man Needs A Maid" - Neil Young (mp3)

"Sign of Love" - Neil Young (mp3)

"Love and War" - Neil Young (mp3)

"Peaceful Valley Boulevard" - Neil Young (mp3)

In Which You Should Be Thanking Me Every Morning When You Wake Up, Along With Jesus, For Giving You Another Day!

Why Is There A Dog In The Parthenon?

by MOLLY LAMBERT

"Once you start expressing your innermost thoughts and feelings, it's kind of hard to stop." - Don Draper

No just kidding that was actually Nick Jonas in Camp Rock 2, but there's a little something about Don in there too amirite? Nick Jonas will be legal on September 16th, just three days after my/Alex's 27th birthday. Here's something Don actually said: "You are twenty-something years old. It's time to get over birthdays." 

Here is a not good way to go about your life: have a two-item checklist that reads "Career" and "Relationship." Spend your whole twenties trying to check off one or both items, eventually finding out that every time you check off one side the other column will mysteriously spring a leak. Even if you choose to opt out there will always be the occasional Megan The Secretary butting in to tell you if you're "doing alright" or not.

Spend some time without either thing in order to learn what you are truly like. Find out that you truly like to download music and stay up way too fucking late. Familiarize yourself with the less well-lit corners of your your adult mind. Decide that you are depressed. Later, romanticize your "depressed period" as a golden age of personal growth and stealth fucking around. Realize as you approach your thirties that you will never escape the tyranny of the checklist, which you never even chose to buy into.

Should you somehow manage to get both plates spinning simultaneously you will be seized with a bout of "What Does It All Mean?" after realizing that achieving your goals has changed absolutely nothing besides to make those goals meaningless, at which point you will hit the reset button on one or both, if only to give your life the semblance of direction and some kind of forward propulsive movement again.

"You look like you could use a good cry" is a great pick-up line to try on dudes. Life is less like The Game Of LIFE and more like a game of Chutes And Ladders. Don and Peggy both need a copy of Kelly Cutrone's If You Have To Cry, Go Outside. When a beautiful woman succeeds, her looks are over-credited. When a handsome man succeeds, it's assumed he was just so successful he also willed himself handsome. 

Don is always failing to earn women's first impression of him, whereas Peggy is always saying something "witty" or doing something smart that makes men give her the condescending surprised respect that all smart girls get used to early on in life. Don is still learning one of life's basic confusing lessons: that who you're most physically attracted to might not correspond to who has the most attractive personality.

Have you ever had a romantic evening with someone that didn't culminate in sex? That doesn't mean there was no sexual tension, just that it was buried down far enough under the conversation that you couldn't even really think about it? Which is actually more romantic than the kind of romance based around suppressing your deep-willed desire to bone somebody long enough to make perfunctory smalltalk, since it is grounded in the attractiveness of your personality, not just your appearance?

What do you call a bromance across gender lines? A platonmance? A friendship? If Peggy were a real person in the modern era she would be rolling her eyes at the world's oversharey facebook status updates like errday. As a fictional character, we just get to see her politely give the extreme side-eye to Trudy's smug pregnant attitude.

Mad Men is neck and neck with Louie pushing the boundaries of meaning, narrative, and comedy in television. Why is it so funny to see Don Draper burst into tears? Because it's deeply cathartic and semi-humiliating to watch? When Duck called Peggy a whore I half-expected her to be like "thank you finally someone who gets my duality!" 

One thing we learned from "The Suitcase": Don is not half-assing it with the S&M lifestyle. Dude is roping Peggy into a serious BDSM relationship with his promises of never-ending all-nighters, furtive half-clasps, and alternating between yelling personal insult tinged inanities and crying just as hard as he throws up Greek food. 

This episode also featured one of my favorite Matthew Weiner thematic touches: the tension-release vomiting spectacle. (see: Betty in the car after learning about Don f-banging Bobbi Barrett, Roger after oysters and a flight of stairs). In lieu of being able to kill people, Mad Men often goes for hardcore throwing up. Don's badge of honor for his bout of late-night personal growth was a well-placed vomit stain on his shirt.

The main complaints I've heard about this season are that the ad campaigns are (purposefully?) no longer good, and that it seems like they have suddenly changed the rules of drunk behavior. Personally I think they're focusing on demonstrating the difference between being a high functioning alcoholic and a non-functioning one.

As for the ad campaigns, they can't do anything remotely close to the Kodak Carousel pitch that famously closed out season one without venturing into self-parody. I buy the idea that clients are stupid, and SCDP is a smaller company, so they have to win people over more. The carousel pitch was Kennedy's America, now they're adjusting to post JFK's death Conquest Of Cool stuff, and they're not quite hitting it yet.

I think the theme of this season especially, as Don mentioned, is the line between brilliance and stupidity and how it is very often just chance that makes some people into life's winners and others into losers. I've got excuses for everything on Mad Men, except for the ghost of Anna Draper, and the line about leaving the door open (groan). I hope Peggy's doofusy fiancé is gone to the Bobbi Barrett character consignment pile. 

Peggy Olson doesn't want to fuck Don Draper, although she is obviously a decent judge of handsomeness and it's LOL that her real tastes run towards the athletic (feel u girl). No, she's got bigger plans than that. She wants to be her own Don Draper. The real question is how did Don get so clean overnight? Does SCDP have an executive washroom on the imaginary second floor of the fictional office building? INCEPTION'D.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls and twitters.

"Minotaur" - The Clientele (mp3)

"Nothing Here Is What It Seems" - The Clientele (mp3)

"Strange Town" - The Clientele (mp3)