Monday, April 20, 2015

SEASON 7, EPISODE 10.

Mathis is now my new favorite character, too bad he’s [SPOILER] fired. First of all, his inept use of Don’s line gave me my first belly laugh of the season. (His foul mouth, which Don also mentions when he fires him, is one of the tiny cracks starting the avalanche of obscenity that would be the 70s and ever after.) Second, Mathis got to something profoundly important about Don that no other male on the show has been willing to approach. (Which reminds me: Don’s supposed to be a genius but he’s nothing but glib; Ginsburg was supposed to be a genius but he was just nuts. Mathis the hack is the only “creative” on this show with any insight on actual human beings.)

Mathis gets to Don partly because he talks back to him, which is something Don never has to take from subordinates. But the lack of respect for his talent and position is nothing compared to the slap about him being nothing but handsome, and Mathis’ relay of the story that Lucky Strike scion Garner was in love with Don and wanted to jack him off. That hits Don where he lives; earlier, when Cutler called him out for his hyper-masculinity (“a bully and drunk… a football player in a suit”) it was just ridiculous, but hearing about how Don’s sexuality affects men really pisses him off. It suddenly lights up all the gay stories in the show, and also Don’s much-discussed history as a victim of sexual abuse. For a moment we and Don have to face that his behavior is compulsive, that his fetish for objectification comes from being objectified, a reaction to the real story of his past…

…which Sally brings up, come to think of it, at dinner later as a way of peeling Don off her nubile classmate. Here too both Don and we get the benefit of the insight: Sally sees the desire to please “just comes oozing out” of Don. She’s hip enough to get that, but too young to know what it comes from. She knows about the poverty (the last time she showed any admiration for her dad was when he finally shared that with her) and she knows (or says she knows) something about sex, but she doesn’t know how deep and twisted it can get. Don’s send-off is as honest as it can be and as hopelessly square as it has to be: “You’re a very beautiful girl,” he tells her – how many other girls has he told that? – “It’s up to you to be more than that.” That’s a pretty open brief. Hey, maybe she’ll join Baader-Meinhof! Or The Runaways!

The Joan-Rich Cracker story was cute, and gives more room to Christina Hendricks’ great Season 7b performance, but it’s inconsequential except as a counterpoint to Don’s alleged big question – “What do you see for the future?” – to which everyone at SCP has transparently bad, short-sighted answers. That kind of cable-zen garbage gives me the itch, but so does the hoary story of monsters of ambition reaching beyond their busy schedules to find true love. If this season ends with Joan having a baby with Rich Cracker in his penthouse, may the shade of Douglas Sirk strangle Matt Weiner with his ectoplasm.

I have to say I approve of all the kids on Mad Men behaving sort of like they’re in a Bresson movie; it really makes them seem a different species from the grown-ups. The funny thing is, Betty has always acted a little like that too. (It’s one of the reasons why she was so fearless with the East Village hippies – she regarded them as less successful child-adults.) But Betty is not really a child, and her handling of Glenn when he spills about his enlistment looks very gentle and correct till you remember she’s been emotionally manipulating him since he was a little boy and she doesn’t even have a clue that it’s fucked up to do that to minors (though maybe the psych classes will help). “Don’t tell me that” was a great preface to “you did this for me” because the thing Betty really wants is not to be told.

Sally’s understanding of Vietnam is on a par with her understanding of her father: she doesn’t know much except it stinks. How I wish we could have a Sally spin-off and follow her through the days of Johnny Rotten and Ronald Reagan.

12 comments:

  1. "...follow her through the days of Johnny Rotten and Ronald Reagan." There is The Goldbergs, which tickles the Breakfast Club demographic's G-spot to the point of squealing orgasms (see Onion AV Club's posts on this).

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  2. Sally’s understanding of Vietnam is on a par with her understanding of her father: she doesn’t know much except it stinks.

    Really? Sometimes that's all you need to know about something. I think too often we're too ready to ignore the perfectly human revulsion we have for certain things like war and injustice and cruelty.

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  3. Huh. I just saw another thing where they mentioned Baader-Meinhoff. It's like it's everywhere all of a sudden.

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  4. LookWhosInTheFreezer1:05 PM

    Random thoughts:

    Joan mentioned being married twice...so...is the second marriage Bob Benson or is that way too obvious? (I hope they bring him back because he was oddly, my favorite character of the whole series.)


    Sally's joke about being "late" also garnered an out-loud laugh from me.

    I'm glad they kept Lou around.

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  5. sundaystyle1:35 PM

    Sally's "late" joke was a quip worthy of Roger Sterling himself. I think the first marriage Joan's referring to was a brief, early marriage she mentioned a season or two ago when her old friend came to town for a visit.

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  6. LookWhosInTheFreezer1:37 PM

    Ah ok. I thought there might have been something I was forgetting. Still, bring back Bob Benson!!

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  7. RogerAiles1:49 PM

    "Sad Sal," a sequel.

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  8. sundaystyle2:06 PM

    Don has been getting his ass handed to him by everybody. Last week Megan called him an aging, sloppy drunk. This week Sally, Peggy, Mathis and even the real estate agent joined in the chorus of criticism.
    I liked that the last shot of the second episode had Don come home to an apartment without furniture, and the last shot of the third episode had him outside his own front door with the new owners inside. He's losing all the turf he used to stride across like a colossus. Don't know where Weiner's going to end up with all this, but he's definitely gotten my attention again.

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  9. mortimer20002:09 PM

    I want to see Sally sneak off to Woodstock, where she drops acid, tosses around a Kodak Carousel frisbee with Baba Ram Dass, and makes mudpies for the volunteers in the emergency tent. (Well, that's how I remember it, anyway.)

    Glad to see Bruce Greenwood in anything, and I'm so hoping his character's name really turns out to be Rich Cracker.

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  10. BG, puppet making crank calls2:20 PM

    Too late --- Woodstock was 1969.


    And yes, it's great to see Bruce Greenwood. And props to him for being willing to wear that hideous suit with that ridiculous scarf. I forgot how ugly the clothes were.


    Betty's scene with Glenn gave me the creeps, especially when she put his hand on her cheek. Narcissistic, manipulative, mixed-signals-sending bitch.


    i don't agree that Don isn't a genius of a certain kind. He's not brilliant, or intellectual, but he knows how to get people to believe something they should be more skeptical about. Would he be as successful if he didn't look the way he does? Who knows? But, in the context of women usually being judged by their looks, it takes a very contemporary question and turns it on its head.

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  11. Ellis_Weiner1:28 AM

    Is it me, or did scenes play like a prime-time soap opera on Mars? I know January Jones is the house replicant, but there's a stiffness to this ep, and last week's, that had me saying to the wife that five years from now this will seem like Dallas. (The series, not the city--also, now that I think of it, created by a fellow Jew from Baltimore. No, Matthew is no relation.) Also, what's with Pete's hideous hair? One nice note: Kieren Shipka (sp?) actually looks like she could be the daughter of Don and Betty.

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  12. yepp, it is!

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