Mad Men: A Mint Julep for the Soul

Sorry about the lack of review last week, folks. My cable company did not understand how vital it was that I see Mad Men.

But between these two episodes, there wasn’t much actual plot development (which is fine; plot is at most 20 percent of the reason I watch this show):

• Betty’s father, Gene, isn’t doing well. His wife has left him, and Betty’s brother is a jerk whose wife is creepily selfless. So Don arranges for Gene to move in with the Drapers. Which is actually pretty selfless of Don, since he appears to hate Gene. Gene spends his first week in the house ranting and accusing poor Carla of stealing from him (it was actually Sally, taking to thievery like a little kleptomaniac).
• Peggy is frustrated with her co-workers’ views of women and the applications of those views to their ad campaigns. So she goes out and hooks up with a vaguely cute kid. Then she gives a pot-induced speech to her new secretary about how she’s going to Have It All! I bet you will, Peggy, I just bet you will.
• Pryce orders Don and Roger to get Sterling Cooper the Madison Square Garden account (these were the people responsible for demolishing the original Penn Station and putting up that Pizza Hut / Roy Rogers combo stand I like so much, which apparently people had a problem with back in the day; can’t imagine why). Then, when Don works his magic spell and covers for that radical communist beatnik Paul (picture me lol-ing all over the place to hear Paul described thusly), Pryce turns around and announces that the London office has vetoed the project after all. Don is pissed, and tells Pryce as much. I’m not clear on where this is going, but I’m sure there will be a payoff.

There was more than that. Much more. But those three bullet points should do for now. I’m not going to attempt to do real summaries of Mad Men episodes. We’d be here all night, and this isn’t a So You Think You Can Dance situation where my only option is to reiterate the goings-on in painful detail because I have nothing else to say.

Because this week, I want to talk about Peggy. I want to talk about the 23-year-old secretarial-school-graduate-turned-senior-copywriter whose life didn’t even begin until she walked into Sterling Cooper three years ago and who’s lived about three lifetimes since then, but who’s still a 23-year-old woman in full-on Experience Life mode. In these two episodes, she smokes her first joint, calls Don a jerk, and has herself a genuine one-night stand, just like the big girls do. Then she runs off and writes some scintillating copy about Bacardi and Coke. (Try mixing it with Patio in it next time, hon. Trust me, it’s way more to your taste than that hard stuff you drink at the office all day.)

Peggy is a woman who knows what she wants even when she doesn’t actually know, know. In season 1, she wanted Pete, and she wanted recognition, and she wanted to be treated with respect, and she wanted a big sister, and she wanted Don to like her, and gosh darn it she wanted to write ad copy. In season 2 she wanted money, and she wanted nice clothes, and she wanted to be left alone to make her own choices and pretend season 1 never happened. Now, she seems to want to be 23 and single and in New York, and to move on from her past mistakes and make a career and independent life for herself. And none of that sounds particularly exciting until you remember that she’s a 23-year-old woman who just got promoted over the 30-year-old sometimes-goateed Princeton alum and that it’s 1963.

I love Peggy episodes. I love Peggy scenes. I love it when Elisabeth Moss walks into a room. I know everyone was saying January Jones deserved the Emmy nod, and I agree that she did, but even if everyone else on the show was awful I would watch it for Peggy alone. And I can’t say that about Betty.

Anyway, let’s move on from Peggy for a moment, even though I could talk about her for another ten pages.

In a wonderful, if random, move, these episodes also showcased the various performing arts talents of the show’s many characters. There was Joan singing and accompanying herself on the xylophone and looking very unhappy about it. There was Peggy singing “Bye Bye Birdie” and attempting to vamp like Ann-Margaret. (I will admit, it wasn’t until I watched this episode of Mad Men that I realized Ann-Margaret was once young.) There was Roger singing in blackface. (And I was so overwhelmed by the fact that he was in blackface I completely forgot to pay attention to John Slattery’s singing. I’m assuming that it, along with everything else about him, was amazing.) There was stoned!Paul singing along with his former a capella buddy (the TigerTones, they were). (I can’t believe it took me this long to realize that Paul was the Andy Bernard http://poptimal.com/tv-shows/the-office/ of Sterling Cooper.) There was even the non-singing non-dancing Don showing off his apparently professional bartending (and bar-hopping) skills.

And, best of all, there was Pete and Trudy dancing up a storm. Do we know the Pete/Trudy backstory, by the way? Did they meet in college? It would seem likely except that Trudy seems to have so many ex-boyfriends, and presumably that was what she was doing in college. So where and when did they acquire their awesome dancing skills? Took classes for the wedding, maybe? Or is this one of those complicated things that old rich New York families do that I simply don’t know about? And more importantly, do we think Vincent Kartheiser could always do that, or did he learn for this episode?

In any case, that dance scene got the biggest grin from me that Mad Men has inspired to date. I would so watch a Pete/Trudy spinoff. Maybe they can open a bed-and-breakfast in some crappy town outside L.A. or something. Pete would have to learn to drive though.

Lingering questions:

• At the party, Betty and Trudy were hanging out like old pals. Does either of them genuinely like the other? It’s impossible to tell; both characters are too adept at acting. Although if I were at that party I would totally want to hang out with Trudy too. (But my adoration of Trudy and all that comes with her shall have to be the subject of some future review, since I’m running out of time here. And speaking of which, we haven’t had a Pete-focused episode yet this season! I know it’s wrong to be impatient when it comes to Mad Men but I need me some quality Campbell time.)
• Why is Ken so perpetually single? I mean, even Paul can get a girlfriend, and Pete and the increasingly unlikable Harry snagged themselves wives years ago. Sal did the same without even trying. We’ve established that Ken’s straight, and he’s apparently considered decent-looking by the people who judge that sort of thing. Is the problem simply that the only way he knows how to interact with women is by chasing them around the office and pulling up their skirts?
• … Is Sally in danger? When she was hovering, terrified, outside her grandfather’s room, I was scared too. For three seasons now, we’ve been getting hints that Betty’s complicated relationship with her father was complicated for a lot of very bad reasons. Sally may well be my favorite character on this show, after Pete, and Trudy, and Peggy, and – well, anyway, she’s up there. And I hope I don’t need to worry about her safety. But I have learned that this show enjoys hurting its viewers almost as much as it enjoys hurting its characters, and so I will continue to fear for Sally.

Anyway, I’ll cut it off there because I know you have things to do and so do I. Even though I could easily go on about Mad Men for another few thousand words. The newly revealed Paul backstory alone has me itching to theorize. But there are still ten episodes left in the season. I only wish I could just download them and watch them all back-to-back. I had to watch these two episodes in a row (thanks again, Comcast) and between Peggy vamping for the mirror and all the wives of the cast wearing those gorgeous print sundresses and the Pete/Trudy dance number, it felt like I was sitting outside in the shade taking a nice long drink of something cool and refreshing with a hint of mint for two hours.

The summer of 2009 is winding down, but the summer of 1963 is just beginning. Can it please, please, please never end?

Season 3, Episodes 2&3: Love Among the Ruins and My Old Kentucky Home (originally aired August 23 and 30, 2009)

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Photographs courtesy of AMC and Carin Baer