Well, I really liked the double ending of the concluding episode - #13 - of Mad Men on AMC tonight: first, what Don would have wanted, coming home and telling Betty and the kids that he'll be going with them to spend Thanksgiving with her family ... cut to ... Don walks through that same door to find Betty and the kids already gone (he had previously told her he wouldn't be joining them). Sure, Don might have called Betty and told her he was coming home ... But the double scene worked so well I can accept Don's lack of phone call as a necessary set-up.
I also loved Harry (Isaac Asimov ringer, played by Rich Sommer) invoking the prehistorical cave paintings in Lascaux. They may indeed be one of the earliest known forms of writing. Siegfried Giedion has suggested that, if seen in flickering candle light, the images may move, and may be a primitive motion picture. (My colleague Ed Wachtel at Fordham University dubbed this the "first picture show," and I worked it into my science fiction novel, The Silk Code. The original Isaac Asimov found these cave paintings fascinating, too.) So why not look at Lascaux as the first advertising on public walls? Harry's mention of Lascaux is emblematic of the literacy and respect for history in the series, and one of its most winning qualities.
Don's promotion of Peggy to copy writer was also gratifying - did Don do this in part to stick it to Pete? - probably. But I also had some big problems with Peggy Olson on tonight's show.
First, she seemed unnecessarily critical about Annie speaking the commercial - or maybe the problem was that Annie sounded ok to me. I mean, hey, what do I know, but I found her convincing enough...
Far more serious is Peggy's pregnancy, which my wife called as soon as Peggy started gaining weight. But wouldn't have Peggy realized she was pregnant before this? Her baby didn't look premature, which means she would have been pregnant for a good many months. Even in 1960, how could she not know this?
Elisabeth Moss did a great job of portraying Peggy, as she has done throughout the series, but this part of the plot just didn't add up.
I also found the scene with Betty and the neighbor's boy a little confusing. Betty wants to talk to him because ... she wants the ear of someone who idolizes her ... ok ... but this could have been made a little more clear.
The scene with Pete and his wife was a little more clear: She at first is operating on the premise that they are not trying to have kids, but, Pete, under pressure from his father-in-law, thinks maybe they should, even though he is still concerned about his income, which his wife assures him is no problem. Ok, you can get that, if you work at it.
So, all in all, I thought the next-to-last episode was better than the final episode of Mad Men. But, that's ok, I thought the same thing about the last two episodes of The Sopranos (with the exception of that brilliantly ambiguous last scene).
Mad Men has established itself as a wonderful time machine - which Don appropriately mentioned in his great soliloquy narration of Kodak's "Carousel," another superb sequence (a real Kodak moment) in this concluding first season episode. The acting - beginning with Jon Hamm's tour-de-force Don Draper, to everyone on the show - is superb, and I hope Matthew Weiner keeps up his fine work on the series for many many years. We are, after all, still a long way from the present - though, as Mad Men also shows with a wink and nuance in every show, maybe not that far away, after all...
See also reviews of other episodes: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ...
And Season Two reviews ... 2.1: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox Machine and a Call Girl
20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through
6-minute podcast review of Mad Men
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
9 comments:
Paul - I know it's inconceivable to us, but to this day there are still women who don't know they are pregnant. I work in health care for a large hospital in LA County. I can think of at least three cases in the last eleven years where women have come in to our ER, in labor, completely unaware of their condition.
As for Peggy, it's 1960 - almost 50 years ago - and women actually knew very little about their own reproduction at that time. She believed she was covered because she was on the Pill, but she had sex with Pete the same day she went on the Pill and was therefore not protected.
I believed Peggy was pregnant all along, like your wife did, but it was such an unpopular opinion on the message boards that I finally shut up about it.
BTW, they established in the first episode that it was March, so the March-November timeline provides for a full-term gestation.
I've really enjoyed (and learned) from your reviews each week! Thank you for being such an enthusiastic fan of the show! I'm off to rehab now, the withdrawal is already setting in. ;)
Paul,
I'm now sorry I didn't watch this one but maybe they'll repeat it before the next season. Have a great weekend!!
Paul,
Burt seemed somewhat exasperated with Don when he mentions the direct call from Rachel's father and Don not knowing that Rachel was on vacation in the middle of the Holiday shopping season. He also cautioned Don to not let his personal situation interfere with business. Burt then dismisses him with: "That's it cowboy".
I think Pete saw that having a baby with his wife was the ticket to getting his father-in-law's account. He is a total snake, and an incredible character.
LA - thanks! True about the March-Nov timeline, and I don't doubt that, even today, women in certain circumstances (uneducated, whatever) might not know they were pregnant ...
But, even in 1960, Mad Men is a story of highly knowledgeable, sharp women ... it's inconceivable that someone with Peggy's smarts wouldn't have known something was up...
Not to mention Joan, who comments on Peggy's appearance in an earlier episode.
I suppose Peggy could have thought that the pill was responsible ... but, then, we should have seen a conversation to that effect...
In any case, still a great show, and I love it!
dawn - well worth watching - you'd love it! have a great weekend, too!
wj: good points ... there may well be a little strain in their relationship now ... especially if the account is really jeopardized
karol - yeah, I agree - good analysis ...
by the way, welcome to Infinite Regress, karol and wj! (dawn has been here since Lost, and LA's been keeping an eye on things here since...)
People are missing the whole point about Peggy's pregnancy. She's on the pill, she doesn't see a doctor once, no maternity clothes, a drink every now and then, a smoke, a bad diet, no big vitamins, whatever symptoms she has she doesn't notice, and then, out pops what to all appearances seems to be an absolutely normal baby. This happens to be what would happen statistically and it was consciously designed to fit into the series' overarching study of the sea change in attitudes and perceptions that have occurred in the past 47 years. Whether she should have noticed she was pregnant or not is a detail; the change in culture is what people should be focussed on.
But I will comment on the idea that she did not know she was pregnant; she is from Bensonhurst Brooklyn, she has had absolutely no sex education either in school or from her parents, she is a loner, she keeps herself busy, people in that time did not focus on themselves or by extension their bodies and it is entirely plausible that this took her by surprise.
I disagree that it's plausible for Peggy to have been unaware - or unsuspecting - of her pregnancy. I might buy the Bensonhurst/LA explanations if she got the Pill from a friend, not a doctor, and so had no idea of what to expect from it, or if she only had some sexual activity that stopped short of intercourse and didn't know that could lead to pregnancy as well - the naive teenager argument. But she obviously understood the basics of conception and contraception enough to go to Joan's doctor in the first place for the Enovid, and we saw her in the examination room reading a sex-education pamphlet called something like "Your Wedding Night", which would have explained the basics. She was not that naive.
Enovid was designed to mimic the natural monthly cycle - doctors were well aware of that in 1960 and had to tell their patients how to take it - three weeks on, one week off. She would have asked someone sometime in those eight months - her roommate, Joan, an anonymous call to the doctor's nurse - why she was not having a period if she was on the Pill, especially since she knew that she had sex with Pete. I just don't buy it - in fact, Enovid was not FDA approved for contraception until May of 1960, but doctors were prescribing it from 1957 ostensibly for menstrual disorders (but off the record for its contraception effect) - with the same three week regimen. I can definitely believe that Joan's doctor prescribed it to her well before the FDA approved it, and that he would have done so for Peggy - would have been nice for the point to have been made, but we did see him as somewhat sleazy. But it still would have been 20 pills and then a week off during which you get your period - it's essential, and I think was a fairly serious mis-step by the writers.
I agree with the last commenter that the over-arching theme is the difference between 1960 culture and 2007 culture - but the devil is in the details, especially in a show that makes us focus on them - and they need to get it right or take the time to explain away the discrepancies. They did a great job of this in most respects, but I hope they'll be more careful in future seasons. And maybe they'll fix this in the season 2 opener, who knows.
(Hi honey - told you so!)
The whole thing with Pete and his wife deciding to have a baby was lost on me when I watched the last two episodes. I could tell that Pete's in-laws wanted them to start a family, but I didn't pick up that it was a condition of the account being thrown Pete's way. I thought Pete and his wife were just tolerating her father's little jokes about having a baby; I didn't think they were seriously considering it.
Only recently finished watching all of Mad Men on DVR and just found this site. Posts and comments here have greatly added to my enjoyment of Mad Men. On the subject of Peggy, I have to weigh in with those who found her naivete believable. Young women coming of age in 1960 had to cope with the conflicting messages of the era. "Good Girls" were virgins when they married and did not explore or begin to understand their own sexuality until after marriage to Prince Charming. They were suppose to look good and "be sexy" but still be virgins. Additionally, this is several years before the publication of the landmark book "Our Bodies, Our Selves" which had to urge women to take charge of their bodies and reproductive organs --instead of placing their sexual and general health in the hands of the all knowing male medical profession.
In the beginning of Mad Men, Peggy clearly finds herself torn between her image of herself as a "good girl" and her desire to fit in with the culture of SC, attract male attention and explore the forbidden world of sex. When she experiences approval for her insights and copy on the lipstick account, the resulting self confidence is far more affirming than anything she experienced as a sex object. Then just as she is feeling good about herself, Pete rains on her parade with his "I don't like you like this" remark.
I believe that was a turning point for Peggy and she decided she wanted the men to see her brains instead of her body. She stopped trying to be sexy and used food to stuff her sexual feelings. The resulting padding became body armor, which allowed her to be certain that any positive interaction with a man was because of her brain and not her sex. Peggy returns Joan's red dress and this a metaphor for Peggy's decision to try to ignore her body and sex and instead seek approval for her other talents. Peggy's tragedy is that just as she reaches some professional success, the body she has tried to ignore forces her to come to terms with the physical part of her being. Peggy, Joan, Betty and Rachel, all suffer the consequences that flow from the narrow paths approved for women and the barriers they bump into when they attempt to express and integrate their full range of needs and emotions.
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