(Or, A Blog is Born.)

Hi.

So, I’m a little uncomfortable with this, because it may be crossing over into narcissistic. But I was over in TV Squad. TV Squad’s Bob Sassone has been a fan of and written about Mad Men since the beginning, and I used to follow his write-ups and comment. The show finally has its own category on the site, and Bob is now a reader of ours as well. (And watch for an interview over there with Rich Sommer in a few weeks. We’ll let you know.)

The thing about Basket of Kisses, as you basketcases know, is that we started it after Season One had aired. Pretty much, right after. The first post was basically Peggy? WTF??? only with a better title.

(Actually, pretty funny. I just glanced over at that first post so I could put in the hyperlink, and I absolutely ask the spelled out version of WTF. I am very freaking consistent.)

Okay so my point, and I will make one, and it in fact ties in with my being consistent… it turns out that looking at my profile page in TV Squad, I can (and now, so can you) view all my comments in one place. So, kind of mini-write-ups/reactions to S1 in progress.

Some of what I’d written are thoughts that I eventually turned into posts here, or talked about in our discussions, at least one is something I’ve still been meaning to write about, some are insights that got lost as more stimuli came into play, and some are predictions, right and wrong. It was interesting, for me at least, to have a look back at my discovery process of this splendid series. Oh and uh… at some point I refer to Don and Betsy. He does call her Bets from time to time, but still. I was so young then (sigh).

On Marriage of Figaro:

I wondered about the Dick Whitman, if it was a real secret past or metaphorical. Now that you guys have cleared that up, what is the meaning? That he feels so removed from his current life that he may as well have a secret identity? That he also feels so removed from his past that he may as well have been someone else? To me, Don’s biggest symptom of depression is an experience of disconnect; not just feeling different from other people, but I get a sense that there is a fog around him. And I think the scene on the train shows him succumbing to the fog… he doesn’t know this guy, but he can’t bring himself to address it. And if he had known the guy, he’d have reacted the same way. That was the purpose, I feel, of having the scene be deliberately confusing to the viewers.

Emphasis mine. “Now that you guys have cleared that up” sounds like commenters confirmed that there was NOT a secret identity, but I went and checked, and they actually confirmed that there WAS. So either I wrote the whole thing unclearly, or I misunderstood what I was reading back then. But the whole Don is depressed and in a fog thing… I was focused on that for weeks and weeks, and have since forgotten all about it.

Anyway, if you do check it out, keep in mind that these are comments, and as such, may be referring to other comments. And there’s one or two in there that are not from Mad Men (like my attack on Grey’s Anatomy’s crappy writing, and my disappointment with the Riches (a show I have since dropped), which is actually what got me over to TV Squad in the first place.

An article in the Montreal Gazette provides this juicy Matthew Weiner quote:

The culture views the ’60s as this kind of golden glory. The election of John F. Kennedy is memorialized as a time of great innocence. And yet, reading the New Yorker from April 1960 and reading the movie reviews in there of Psycho and The Apartment, I thought to myself, ‘This is not a particularly innocent society.’ We forget that the wave of youth and enthusiasm that swept the country then was decided by about 100 votes.

Psycho and The Apartment? Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah. Here’s a Mad Men conversation about The Apartment:

Aw, Red, that’s not how it is. Look, it was crude. That’s the way pictures are now. Did you see that ridiculous Psycho? Hollywood isn’t happy unless things are extreme.

Roger Sterling to Joan Holloway, Long Weekend

What were the big movies of 1960? I perused the IMDb (it’s like a home to me) and found:
Psycho
The Apartment
Inherit the Wind
BUtterfield 8
Elmer Gantry
Exodus
Midnight Lace
Little Shop of Horrors
Ocean’s Eleven
Spartacus
The Alamo
Murder, Inc.
Sons and Lovers
The Sundowners
Can-Can

I haven’t seen all of them, but there are some definite themes. They are movies about distrust, betrayal by authority, sexuality, isolation, sexuality that is isolating, religious tyrants, and noble rebellion against oppressive authority.

In the Great Hooker Oscars of 1961, Elizabeth Taylor won the Best Actress award for playing a whore in BUtterfield 8, defeating Shirley Maclaine’s tragic “other woman” in The Apartment; while Shirley Jones won Best Supporting Actress for playing a whore in Elmer Gantry, defeating Janet Leigh’s frankly sexual portrayal in Psycho. Heady stuff, and, while the previous year’s award show wasn’t exactly tame (Suddenly, Last Summer and Anatomy of a Murder saw to that), Ben-Hur, Some Like It Hot and Pillow Talk were considerably more wholesome.

Perversity plays a role in Little Shop of Horrors as well as Psycho. Spartacus and Exodus are optimistic fights against oppression, and praise religion as they fight authority, but Inherit the Wind and Elmer Gantry show the dark side of religious authority, and The Apartment is a screed against institutional authority, which destroys decent men and women unless they fight back.

The overall effect is remarkably dark, even though this is also the year of Pollyanna and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. The world is a dangerous place, twisting us up and spitting us out, turning women into whores and men into slaves and pawns.

For Mad Men Season 2, some interesting movies show up. 1962 gives us:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lawrence of Arabia
Tom Jones
Hud
Irma La Douce
8 1/2
Lilies of the Field
The Manchurian Candidate
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

A lot of the themes continue, violating social norms, amorality, illicit sexual behavior are all present. The last two movies listed are about lies and divided men; the stories told about them versus who they are. They are Dick Whitman versus Don Draper movies. I think they are the Apartment and Psycho for next season; they paint a picture of some of the mysteries to be revealed.

In addition, two movies that address racism suggest another possible theme of season 2.

So I posted about the naming of Don Draper. (Mr. Weiner has not called to confirm my theory, but he will, I’m sure. Call me, k?)

Well within an hour of this revelation, (I kid you not, within an hour!) I get an email from our very own wisefish (whose comments were always inexplicably visiting our spam-catcher first before being rescued but now it’s finally better), talking about the possible origins of Dick Whitman’s name.

From her email to me:

Have you heard of the folk tale of Dick Whittington and His Cat?

My husband just started reading From Here to Eternity and read a reference to someone being … “a sort of Dick Whittington with a bandanna tied to a stick but no cat.”

Not being familiar with the Dick Whittington reference, he Googled it and found the folk tale I linked to above.

I would dare say that Matthew Weiner is familiar with Dick Whittington and His Cat. He sounds a lot like Dick Whitman/Don Draper!

Okay, that pretty much was her email to me.

So I check out the folk tale. Orphan boy (with a bandanna tied to a stick; I love it) eventually gets rich. Works for me.

I know that Weiner also spoke about how he’d always planned for this sort of Huck Finn (or Tom Sawyer?) thing, in reference to Don’s bringing Dick’s body back on the train. (or, Dick bringing Don’s body back.) I never read either of them, but I know that the kids attend their own funeral in Tom Sawyer, and then reveal that they are alive, and in Huck Finn he fakes his own murder in order to escape from his abusive father, and that has him head down the Mississippi. My guess is that it is the Huck scenario that Weiner alludes to. Anyone who actually read it, please feel free to chime in and help me out here.

Two thoughts this last time I watched Nixon vs. Kennedy (okay, a zillion thoughts; two I’m posting about here).

First: Holes. At the beginning of the Hobo Code flashback, Dick “Bowlcut” Whitman is digging a hole. For fun. His stepmother asks him to stop. In the opening of the final flashback in Nixon vs. Kennedy, Private Dick Whitman is digging a hole. Nice visual continuity, that.

Second: Fairness. In discussing the outcome of the presidential race, Cooper tells Don that Nixon will allow Kennedy’s election shenanigans in Chicago to go uncontested so that he’ll have a chance to run again. (It was more complicated than that, but that’s how he tells it.) Don says that it doesn’t sound fair, a phrase which brings astonishment to Cooper’s face.

Later, Peggy says that what happened in the office isn’t fair. The first time I saw this episode, I thought that the phrase of Peggy’s that pushed Don past his fear was “some people…people who aren’t good can do whatever they want” (I may have that imperfectly worded, but it’s close). But at that point I didn’t notice the parallel “fair”s, and we do know that Peggy parallels Don. I think the simple, plaintive “It’s not fair,” the child’s voice that was never answered, never soothed, is what ultimately compels Don to at last fight back.

Okay, one last parallel. Rachel calls Don a coward. Don remembers that he was a coward; he pissed himself. And y’know? He’s still pissing himself. Calling Pete’s bluff, he is, at last (in a way that honestly doesn’t soothe him, merely surprises him) not a coward.

One way to describe the underlying theme of Mad Men, if you look at the stuff that Matt Weiner says, is that it’s the dark side of the American Dream. What is the American Dream, you ask? It’s the self-made man, rise from nothing, become Somebody. Humble origins. Put your belongings on a wagon train and strike gold. In a word, it’s Don Draper.

Don is the ultimate self-made man, because he made not only his success, but his very identity. But what is a secret identity?

Mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent is secretly Superman. This is an ancient story: Stammering Moses is secretly God’s Chosen Prophet. But there’s another version, opposite to this one.

While Clark Kent’s secret identity is Superman, Spiderman’s secret identity is Peter Parker. For Superman, his authentic self is the hero; invulnerable and awesome. The bumbling reporter is just a put-on. But for Spiderman, the science geek with girl trouble and a nagging aunt is his true self; when Spidey looks in the mirror, who he sees is Peter Parker. It’s the hero that’s the put-on.

The question is, who does Don see in the mirror? Is it Don Draper, or Dick Whitman? Maybe the real dark side is that he himself does not know.

I was watching Long Weekend tonight, and taking extensive notes. I’ll have more to say later on. But for now, I was noticing this. That Don is not a womanizer.

People all over the Internet are angry at Don for cheating on Betty. And yeah, Don’s a cheater. An adulterer. These are bad things and we can be mad at Don. But he’s not a skirt-chaser. He’s not, to put it plainly, Roger Sterling. (And I have some thoughts about Roger I’ll also be fleshing out—no pun intended—in the near future.)

In Long Weekend, Roger says he wants to use Don “as bait.” He knows the way to go is to pick up two young women and end up with one. This isn’t new; he’s after the same thing in Red In the Face, and only wrangles an invitation to dinner when his plan fails.

Roger is a womanizer. He wants warm, lovely flesh. He wants a young woman to remind him of youth. He wants beauty and soft skin and lips like strawberries in milk. Don wants something different.

When Don says he wants to go home he means it. He doesn’t want to be with Roger, with twenty year-olds on their laps. He’s a bad husband, but he believes in the salvation of being a husband and having a family. And it’s when that salvation doesn’t pan out that he goes for Midge, and then for Rachel. He tells Rachel in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes that he doesn’t believe in love, but he’s deeply romantic; he believes each of these women might save him.

I’ll tell you something else: Don Draper married Betty, but Dick Whitman went for Midge and for Rachel. Dick Whitman is the one attracted to Midge’s taste of Bohemia, and to Rachel’s aloneness and motherlessness. Betty is truly and deeply being cheated, because she’s the only one who gets not even a taste of the authentic Dick Whitman within Don.

Which is…not where I thought this essay was going. Funny how these things turn out. What I started out thinking was how much we need our television heroes to eschew the getting laid side of relationships. I’m reminded of Mal Reynolds being all uncomfortable with “Saffron” (our own Christina Hendricks). He’s as horny as the next fellow, but you don’t just screw a woman because she happens to be naked in your bed! I don’t know if real men really go ahem-ahem-ahem and back away when sex is available, but I know on television you can count on it. We can sympathize even with anti-heroes if they have that quality.

Don has that quality. With the twins in Long Weekend it’s quite obvious, but it’s there in the first episode with Peggy, and in Marriage of Figaro he’s practically the only one not to hit on Helen Bishop.

Don, as I said, is a romantic. And (despite what Bert Cooper thinks), kind of a humanist. He wants to be with a female person, not a female body. He wants to be touched and moved and he wants to connect. He longs to connect. Whereas Roger has no such longing. He just wants a respite.

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.

So, last week I was speculating about Don at the train station in Marriage of Figaro. Was he suicidal? Was he thinking about running away again—was the train “escape” to him?

So on Saturday, there’s Matt Weiner, and of all the zillion questions I want to ask, well, that seems like the best one. After Roberta finished her question, I took the mike and that’s what I asked.

She has the digital recorder, so I’m paraphrasing, but here’s what he said:

Trains are profoundly important for Don. He got on a train as Dick Whitman, got off as Don Draper, leaving “his” corpse behind. In a very real way, the train is where Don Draper came from. So when he was lost, confused, bereft, and didn’t know where to go, he went to where he came from, where he began. The train.

Then Weiner talked about the CGI image of the train reflected on Don, and how beautiful it was, and how important, and how pleased he was to see it.

But the thing I came away with was that (a) I was right about the importance of trains as a symbol, and that felt validating, and (b) that Weiner’s response was more psychological, more nuanced, and less of an answer.

I love that. I was looking for “an answer.” As in “it meant this.” It meant suicidal. It meant running away. But no, it didn’t mean anything so specific, so packagable. Don sat there not knowing why he sat there. He sat there hoping an answer for why he was sitting there would emerge.

I hate movies and TV shows that are too answery. It was all a dream. She was really his sister. Ray Charles had a drug problem because of his brother’s death. Howard Hughes had OCD because his mother made him spell c-h-o-l-e-r-a. Movies and TV are full of “because,” but real life just isn’t.

Sometimes I’m on a date and someone will ask me why my marriage ended. And I want to ask, ‘Did your marriage end because of a “why”? Does any marriage end that simply?’

There’s an answer to Don’s past—he was Dick Whitman, “whoreson,” and he switched dog tags with his dead CO. But there also isn’t an answer. He’s a lost and fearful person who doesn’t understand why his happy life doesn’t feel happy, why he’s given his wife everything but her hands go numb, why he sits at the train and can’t make himself go home. And answers don’t come in neat little packages just before the last commercial break. Not on our show.

The episode title “Babylon” is more oblique than many. What does it mean?

Over lunch, Don asks Rachel about Judaism and Israel. She says the Jews have always been exiles; first in Babylon, and then all over the world. She tells him “Zion” is just an ancient word meaning “Israel” (Don is a little threatened by those “Zionists”), and that she has no interest in living in Israel, but it’s important to her that it exists.

It seems that, if there’s a Homeland, she is more at peace with living in exile. Don, too, lives in exile—from himself—and we see the first flashback to the childhood of Dick Whitman in this episode.

One thing that’s interesting about Don/Dick is that he has no education. Dirt poor, abused, neglected, Dick joined the Army and then began the life of Don Draper. Betty tells him what she learned in “first year Anthropology,” and Rachel tells him the Greek meaning of “Utopia,” which she learned in college; he is hungry not just for these women’s bodies, but for the knowledge they have. And that underscores his outsider/exile status.

Later, Don meets Midge, longing to satisfy both hungers. He grabs her passionately (right after seeing Rachel…) and then she shows him a beatnik underground in which he is an alien. It is there, at “The Gaslight,” that Midge and Roy’s friend sings a version of Rivers of Babylon (at least, I think it’s Rivers of Babylon—it might be one of the other songs based on Psalm 137).

And, finally, Joan and Roger. He is alienated from his wife and daughter. Which is clearly his own fault. They are in a hotel, which is a no man’s land, a place between, a territory for the homeless that reminds Joan uncomfortably of a hospital room (suggesting some back story there, I think). It is also a waystation, a place where they can find comfort in each other. In the final seconds of the episode, as the song plays, Joan and Roger are apart from each other, and leaving the hotel. Leaving Babylon? Or leaving Utopia to return to Babylon?

Roberta is obsessed with Betty, but for me, it’s mostly Don (although all of the characters have their fascinations).

What I learned in Episode 12 was that Don is improvising, and he’s operating out of panic. We know a bit about his childhood; “I’m a whore-son” he said matter-of-factly in Episode 8. My thoughts at first was that he had an intense (and justifiable) urge to get away, that he was full of rage, and that he was a social climber. Dick Whitman couldn’t have the home in Ossining, so Dick Whitman had to be over.

But in Nixon vs. Kennedy I saw something different: Terror. Don fears he can be dragged back to “Dick Whitman, Whoreson” at any time. His escape hangs by the thinnest of threads. And all he really wants to do is run. He wants to run with Rachel. He wants to drown in the comfort that Rachel offers, and he wants that comfort to be a running away of a kind.

All of it is improv. He had no master plan when he became Don Draper, no plan when he buried his past, no plan when he didn’t get off the train. It’s all a little boy running away from home with his meager possessions tied in a bundle and resolutely refusing to cry.