There are obvious similarities to the original story "A
Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (social unrest as a historical
backdrop, water as symbolism for growing tension). In this episode,
Megan asks if she should pack Don's swimming trunks for his trip, and later advises him, "Take a swim, you
always feel better." We'll see about that.
Things
are still shaking out after the merger of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce
(SCDP) and their competitor Cutler Gleason and Chaough (CGC). Despite
the merger of the only two firms that she's worked for, Peggy feels like
she is taking a step back. SCDP, where she rose from secretary to ad
woman, is traveled ground and it leaves her a little road weary. When
the SCDP and CGC merged a few episodes ago in order to pursue Chevy as a
client, Peggy looked surprised at the news, then concerned, even angry
because she was going back to the office environment she thought she had
left behind. Compared to Don Draper's often rough mentoring, she much
prefers the style of Ted Chaough of CGC, her most recent boss. Okay, so
maybe she has a little thing for him, too, but she definitely doesn't want to see Don's darkness rub off on saintly Ted.
Did you catch the cool, but stung look on Joan's face after she
realized the date set up by her friend Kate was simply so the new head
of Avon marketing could pick her brain about what to look for in a
advertising agency? Mr. Avon doesn't want to go out with her, he just
wants to ask Joan a few questions about what he should expect from a
firm handling Avon's marketing. He knows that Joan works in an ad agency
but he feels safe by exploring these issues with her since they didn't
meet under the premise of doing business.Joan isn't exactly in sales (okay, there was Mr. Jaguar),
Things go south when Joan confides in Peggy, her long-time office friend, and peer. (They're similar in their intelligence and ability and desire to get ahead, but they have different methods for accomplishing their ends.) Peggy tells Joan that Ted will be happy about the new business no matter where it came from, and proceeds to a rushed hallway meeting with Ted, Joan in tow.
Ted tells Peggy he doesn't have much time to talk to her, so is it any surprise that he doesn't get the inference that Peggy is trying to convey: "Joan wants to run with this new business, what say you?" As the firms have only recently merged, Ted doesn't have a thorough knowledge of Joan's professional abilities, so he does what he would routinely do: Hand the client off to someone like Pete Campbell, head of new accounts. In fact that is just what he does, and he tells Joan that Peggy and Pete will be great on the account, completely leaving her despite the fact that she is the one that made contact with the client.
Pete
tells Joan that she should contact Mr. Avon and set up a meeting for
Peggy and for him, but Joan isn't invited. Joan, still riding the pride
pony, won't do that. Instead, she schedules a meeting and invites only
Peggy, who is uncomfortably forced to back up Joan's play to get Avon's
marketing business.When Pete finds out, he goes whining to Ted and they all meet in a conference room.
So, yep, that settles that. Everybody hates Pete's whining and Ted says
Peggy's being in the right spot at the right time to help Joan is a bit of synchronicity that is worth exploring. Peggy's new office at her old firm finds her in cramped quarters (again), but it is the very spot place where Peggy herself became part of the advertising wheel. In the days when Peggy was a secretary, the firm ad men sat in a dark, cramped office with one-way mirror and an intercom concealed behind drapes, and watched and commented as consumers (sometimes their own secretaries) tested their clients' products. The point was to gain ideas for copy, but it more often than not turned into a display of male crudity and yet another excuse to drink while at work. Even Don was disgusted with some of their antics.
Peggy was being observed, but
separated herself from the secretarial pack testing lipsticks and being
observed and lured at from behind the glass. She called a trashcan of
blotted lipstick tissues a "basket of kisses."
The ad guys, watching
from behind the glass, decide Peggy was a bit clever, and should give
them some copy for their beauty product client, Belle Jolie. Peggy did
so successfully and "Mark Your Man" was not only the beginning of
Peggy's advertising career, but a successful slogan for Belle Jolie
beauty products. (She mentions the "Mark your Man" campaign to Mr. Avon
during their luncheon.) Peggy has definitely come full circle on the
wheel. While she was the one being observed by the all-male club making
the big decisions that would affect the rest of her life, now she is the
one observing Pete and Ted's meeting and taking definitive action in a
real show of female solidarity with Joan.
There were so
many interesting things that also came up with Bob and Ginsberg, too.
(Seeing their names together made me think of Bob Dylan and his close
friend Allen Ginsberg.) Bob Benson is that character that seems benign,
but is so hard to completely trust or like. He is always smiling,
lurking where he's not supposed to be, ready to be needed by anyone he
may in turn need, kissing butt so hard that you know he has toilet paper
in his teeth (he actually bought TP for his boss Pete).
Ginsy, Bob and Pete bear more reflection, but I find myself coming back to the question that interests me most and that I've been asking myself since Season 2: Will Don Draper's character end up "in the movie business, too?" Can't you see Don as agent or studio head? What I can't see is Don continuing in his present occupation. Despite his success, he is clearly bored and wants to run away. His recent idea for client Sheraton's Hawaii campaign showed shoes, a suit and tie being left on the sand with an ocean in the background, with the caption: "Hawaii: the jumping off point." Sheraton didn't like it and saw it as a reference to suicide.
In this episode, Don and Roger and Harry Crane head out to L.A. to court Carnation, a potential client. Harry probably had a great time as his smarminess boils over when around his own kind (TV/movie folk),
but Roger got a knock in the pants and
Don ended up being a man overboard and about to step off into paradise
(read: not Hawaii). Roger deserved what he got for his
snarky remarks to Danny, trying to steal his girl, but mostly for
dressing like Thurston Howell, III. It was made much more confusing
for Roger that the punch to his zipper was delivered by Danny, literally
a little man who couldn't make it in the ad world--despite
his family connections--and who was unceremoniously fired by Roger after
one day. But with his L.A. crowd, Danny is connected, relaxed and in
charge. (No wonder Roger sees himself as a New Yorker.) Why was Danny
the first person Don noticed at the party. Is that significant? Don was
noticed, too; described by party goers as "the guy who came in a taxi."
(New York, anyone?) As the guys mingle at the party, we see Don drift over to talk to a composer, who says that if times get hard, he'll look Don up because he digs jingles and the bread is out of sight. (If times get hard? Snap!) He asks Don who he represents, and Don throws out a few names plus his old favorite, Mohawk Airlines. The composer clearly doesn't know the company and Don gives an embarrassed and brief explanation. Remember when Don was the righteous ad man who thought it cheap and crass to drop Mohawk as a client when Sterling and Cooper wanted to do just that in order to pursue American Airlines? Compare that to the guy who is so uninterested in his own company that he really doesn't care whether his name is on the door. But who can blame him? In this episode his partner Roger tells Don: “We’re conquistadors. I’m Vasco de Gama and you’re . . . some other Mexican.”
An episode from the second season, The Jet Set, (Season 2, Episode 11), seemed to have a lot of more going on than just what was apparent on the surface. It was about how we want things to be versus how they really are. It's one of the few times we see Don sort of out of his element and a bit awed by wealth and freedom. Don once wanted to be a certain kind of man and now has so much of what he once thought was important, but he's lost himself along the way. I seem to remember that in that episode, the Count or his daughter Joy asking Don if he was from Hollywood or worked in Hollywood. It would be a perfect fit and was a natural assumption. Maybe he will end up there yet.
When Don got screwed up on amphetamines a few episodes ago, he had an interesting exchange with a trippy young girl (daughter of the recently deceased Frank Gleason, a partner Don acquired during the merger). Wendy tells him that what he wants to know is "who loves him." Then she listens to his heart with a stethoscope and tells him it is broken, she can't hear it. Don's had lots of women and is typically depressed when the affair is over. I assume that is because he was abandoned and left by the early women in his life and he is always trying to conquer that feeling and win the love of all the women in his life. He's even a little jealous of Peggy's affection for Ted. But he's cheated on his wives and mistresses, ignored his children, lied about most of his existence and has become indifferent to life and death. Contrast his repeated nonplussed reactions to the violence on the news with the ones we see from Megan, Joan or Peggy and we can't help but notice that Don just can't bring himself to care about anything but himself.
At the end of this season's episode 7, we saw Megan watching the news in the aftermath of Bobby Kennedy's assassination while Don sat on the bed away from her, feeling sorry for himself for the end of his most recent affair. In the background, his empty suit hung on a valet suit stand, a pretty picture on the wall just above it. Does that represent Don's ability to paint a pretty picture while being totally clueless and absent in his own life? With so little anchoring him to the joy of life, it's not all that curious that he has had visions of dead people for awhile now.
Megan then morphs into the also very dead Pfc. Dinkins
(the soldier Don met in Hawaii) appears and whips out the lighter and once again gives Don some fire. (Have you noticed that Don always pulls out a cigarette
when he is at a loss for words?) While the real Don is probably floating face down in a
pool, the hashed-out Don takes a pull off his cig as he
listens to Dinkins: "My wife thinks I'm MIA, but I'm dead."Hmm, Megan thinks she and Don just aren't connecting, but the truth is that he is dead inside. Dinkins goes on to tell Don that being dead doesn't make you whole and tells him he should see himself. That's when Don has an out-of-body experience and realizes that he is seeing himself floating face down in the pool in full suit and tie and shoes. It's very reminiscent of the opening montage of MM when Don turns and falls face down, all while wearing dapper business apparel.
There was a lot of obvious and neat symbolism in this episode, but I kind of wondered why the hash specifically made Don see dead people. I'm not sure it was really the hash or Don's tenuous grip on emotional, moral health. But it could be that Don is being compared to Theophile Gautier, noted to be the founder of the 1840s Club of Hashish-Easters, who when meeting up with a part of that group at a local hotel for the first time, mentions attending one of their regular seances. Apparently the group was known for trying to contact the dead while smoking hash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_des_Hashischins
So then, if Roger's therapist is correct that the job of your life is to know yourself and then you'll love yourself, we have to wonder if Don knows himself at all. He looked downright scared after Roger made this statement. If he knows himself at all, he knows he grew up in a whorehouse and has made a living hustling one thing or another. His similarity to the prostitutes he grew up with is made worse by the fact that unlike them, he has little or no honor. Will he die in Babylon, too?
Despite popular predictions, I don't think Don will kill himself. When he's unhappy, Don runs away. He's been running away from his life for most of his life and his connection to liquid (swimming, drinking, nearly drowning) could be seen as a baptism of sorts. Instead of suicide, perhaps Don is going to be reborn now as something else. Maybe not better, but not Dick Whitman, either. He's great at reinvention. Isn't the opening montage of the show simply Don falling past all his past successes? Where is he going?
L.A. anyone?
