In Babylon, when Roger tells her that before meeting her he was ready to leave his wife, she play-slaps him. But the intention of the slap was, Don’t you ever talk about leaving your wife.

And in Marriage of Figaro, she says that Lady Chatterly’s Lover is “another testimony to how most people think marriage is a joke.”

by rkl

…or something. A nominee to the nominees. Top 11 (11?) semi-finalists for best supporting drama actress.

Tom O’Neil of the LA Times ‘the Envelope’ has plenty to say about this list. Of interest to us:

Another surprising omission: January Jones, who portrays Jon Hamm’s emotionally plagued wife on “Mad Men.” Her role is so prominent that many Emmy observers were surprised she opted to compete in the supporting race, not lead like costar Elizabeth Moss. Instead, voters (academy membership is overwhelmingly male) chose to snuggle up to costar Christina Hendricks, who portrays the — ahem — sexually frisky office manager.

Christina is nominated to be nominated (whatever) for Babylon. I’m all for it.

Okay, okay, I know I’ve posted a lot today, but the DVDs got me all excited.

A long while back, we were discussing the song “Babylon” (which I misidentified as “Rivers of Babylon”). I spent all sorts of time on the Web trying to figure out what song and what version it was, and we got close, but man. All you really need is a DVD. (For the record, I also emailed AMC and SAG but they were no help at all.)

So, the Disc One feature on “Scoring Mad Men” is mostly David Carbonara talking about the musical themes used in the show, but he also talks about Babylon. Turns out it’s a Don McLean song from American Pie. (Not really, it is the traditional song we ultimately identified, but that’s where Matt Weiner got it from.) And I’m seriously bent, because I know my brother had this album (on like, vinyl) and I’ve heard it and I DID NOT KNOW. But anyway.

Weiner asked Carbonara to use the song at the end of the Babylon episode, and to be one of the three singers (he’s the one with the zither). Weiner’s instructions were to arrange the song and get two more singers.

So now we know.

Mona Sterling, to Joan and Don: “Don’t you two make a handsome couple?”
Joan Holloway: “Honestly? I don’t go for handsome.”

— Babylon

Inspired by the new trailer showing Joan making out with someone…do you suppose he’s handsome?

A weekend quotation, only longer.

From Bablyon. Sunday night, Mother’s Day, Don and Betty are being playful in bed.

Don: What about Advanced Reproduction? How are your studies progressing in that?

Betty: Mmm… Completed. I got an A, actually.

Don: You did?

Betty: Yup I did.

Don: I flunked the whole thing.

Betty: Well that’s because you got caught cheating.

In honor of sixty years of Israeli statehood:

So, we’ve got a quasi-communist state where women have guns, and it’s filled with Jews.

—Don Draper, Babylon

A long time ago, our own Dansj mentioned that Roger and Joan in the episode Babylon are like a Hopper painting.

I left myself a note to look into that, and my lovely sister saw the note (in our shared “notes” space under the blog hood) and sent me this (actually, she sent several, but this one is it):

It’s not exactly right, of course, but it has exactly the feel of the episode. Compare it to this:

And now look at this Hopper:

…and compare it to Roger and Joan again:

Here’s the whole Babylon closing sequence.

This has been driving me crazy. I will state right now that I haven’t researched this… I suppose the trick would be to find a book cover from 1960 of Exodus, or even some other best seller from the period that was re-issued while the movie based on it was in production. For my purposes, to find several books. Or print ads for those books.Because in Babylon, when Lily Meyer slides Exodus across the conference room table and over to Don, she tells him that it is “soon to be a major motion picture”. And she says it with the quotation marks as part of her inflection; she is lifting a popular phrase.

My gut, and my gut alone, tells me that turning this kind of phrase was not commonplace. That even if the industry was using it, people were not. People just didn’t lift catch-phrases the way they do today. Especially people to whom English is a second language. I really don’t think that started until the 70’s; I believe it to be a post-modern phenomenon, and in 1960 we were just broaching modern.

Now, Deborah suggests that perhaps she was directly quoting, and not being ironic. Maybe that’s it. But I don’t see why she would be inclined to directly quote rather than rephrase. 

By contrast, in Red in the Face, Ken, in response to being teased, says “Har-dee-har-har”. I think this was appropriate for the time… this was a proper catch-phrase (well, hardly a phrase, but you get it), that Jackie Gleason repeated week after week. It didn’t require the clever self-consciousness that “major motion picture” required. It didn’t have a twist. It simply mimicked.

I can identify the first ‘joke’ of this nature that I saw on TV. It was on One Day at a Time, and someone announces something. (Okay, I don’t remember it that well.) And Barbie, our beloved Valerie Bertinelli (well, beloved until this Jenny Craig nonsense, but you shouldn’t get me started on that), responded by saying, “…film at 11“. And it got a huge laugh. Because it was new and fresh, to lift a phrase that had become so common, but not acknowledged.

Today it’s entirely different. The innocence of a line like “…film at 11″ is gone, and on its own it has no humor. Today’s humor is so media-self-referential that it’s hard to even trace the joke back to its roots. Friends and Shrek and Will & Grace are great examples of that. Will untangles Grace from her electric blanket cord, and says into the cord, “Ladies and gentlemen, Grace: Unplugged”. That is several steps further than “Film at 11″. Even when Letterman introduces anyone as “the lovely and talented”, there is a subtle sarcasm that we have all so fully absorbed we no longer identify it. But once upon a time, that, coming from Letterman’s mouth, was really funny, because it was making fun of the oh-so standard and overdone and perhaps insincere introduction that talk show hosts routinely delivered. We used to notice. Now it’s changed. Now it’s the mocking delivery of those words that have become the standard. Sarcasm and satire have become the norm.

I have witnessed this evolution in my lifetime. Today, anyone can lower their voice real deep and say “In a world…” and it’s an instance movie trailer reference. But how many years of hearing that in trailers did it take for us to pick up on it? And as a culture, now, picking up on it is what we do.

In 1960 I don’t believe that kind of shtick was part of our culture. And I don’t believe Ms. (I know, I know, I’m early. But I can call her Ms. if I want to!) Meyer would have said it.

As we wrap-up Jon Hamm Birthday Week here at BoK, I wanted to focus on the events of Don Draper’s life over the course of Season One.

Weiner, at the oft-quoted Jacob Burns Film Center event, talked about the influence of the film the Apartment. We’ve heard this a lot, and the film itself is alluded to in Babylon. But what Weiner discussed was how in the Apartment, most of the movie is set-up. Exposition. The bulk of the film is the audience and the characters discovering the circumstances that are already in occurrence.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is mostly exposition. It remains a brilliant pilot no matter how many viewings, but the big reveal at the end turns into a not-so-much once you know that Don is married. And the season is filled with such reveals. We are figuring out who these people are by finding out who they’ve been. Dick Whitman. Joan and Roger. Joan and Paul, for that matter.

This is the nature of storytelling, these two components; exposition and occurrences.

And so I wanted to close in on what has happened to Don, distinct from what we learn about him.

Because um… he’s had a hell of a year. And that is what I thought as I watched him sit on those stairs, our heads filling with the future.

So let’s review.

Nine months for Don

• He gets a new secretary. He recognizes her talents and promotes her to copywriter.
• His wife grows increasingly unhappy and strange. After Betty has a car accident with his children, he reluctantly sends her to a psychiatrist… with whom Don covertly discusses her progress.
• He fires Pete Campbell, only to have him unfired by his superiors. He gets a big fat bonus. He gets seriously wooed by a bigger agency, and as a result gets an even bigger fatter raise. His direct supervisor and sometime partner-in-crime has a non-fatal heart attack in his presence. He heads up several successful campaigns, brings in new clients, and loses one account. He is made partner.
• He leaves his mistress of (seemingly) many years.
• He meets and falls for Rachel Menken. He reveals things to her that have never been revealed. She leaves him.
• His secret past is discovered, and he is blackmailed. He does not give in, and the truth is brought to his boss. Who doesn’t care.
• He falls down a flight of stairs. Ow.
• He smokes pot.
• His younger brother comes to him out of his lost past, and Don pushes him far away. After a few months, Don has a change of heart and tries to contact Adam, only to discover that he has committed suicide.

And I am just saying… holy crap, that’s a lot. For a man who knows how to cope and survive but who doesn’t have a clue how to process, this is a lot.

At the beginning of Babylon, Don falls down the stairs after tripping on a toy. Don lands on his back and Betty’s breakfast in bed comes crashing down around him.

I can imagine a thousand reactions to such an experience. If it were my own father in, say, 1969 (when Roberta and I were about the age of Don’s kids), he’d have screamed at us about the toy. There would have been a lot of screaming. And even though I said a thousand, I’m kind of stuck in the notion of rage. Don’s an alpha male, he’s the head of the family, it’s all about him, the whole 1960 family structure makes sure he knows that. Pete would rage. Or sulk. Or both.

But Don looks up at Betty from his humbling position on the floor, smiles a sweet, self-depracating smile, and says “Happy Mother’s Day.”

It’s…perfect. It’s exactly how you’d hope a person would react in such a moment; without blame or anger or shame or grief. Just take it in stride and let it go. And it speaks to an excellence of character within Don, despite his flaws. He has a sense of goodness towards the world. He isn’t getting even. He isn’t keeping score. And this makes him, yes, extraordinarily loveable.