One thing we haven’t gotten much of a look at is the women’s grooming process. We see them all look so perfect (or, occasionally not, like Carol the day she got fired and Francine freaking out over Carlton’s affairs).

For the most part all we see is the occasional lipstick application. But we don’t see what it takes to get Joan’s and Betty’s hair so flawless, or Helen Bishop’s face looking photo-ready.

Although as I write this, it occurs to me that neither do we ever see the meals being made. This, I believe, is quite deliberate. The women who do ‘nothing’ all day serve these multi-component meals. (Meat, potatoes, vegetables, probably salad and fresh-baked rolls and always dessert.) I am always aware of it. Especially in the case of Trudy, the newlywed, who may well spend the better part of her day planning and preparing Pete’s dinner (it takes awhile to get the rhythm, right?). Washing and ironing the tablecloth and napkins. And by the time he is home, she’s relaxed and ‘lovely’, but I bet that requires a full behind-the-scenes revamp.

So maybe it is Weiner’s intention that we never see it. Never see either; the grooming or the meals. The housework. Maybe the statement is that no one sees it. That it is so invisible and unappreciated that he can’t even bring himself to expose it.

Yet.

I’ve posted in the past about the Whedon connection to Mad Men. Well, my son and I are watching Angel on DVD these evenings, and lo & behold, looks like Darby Stanchfield (Helen Bishop) guest-starred in the Angel Season 2 episode “The Anniversary.”

It’s very geeky, but I love finding things like this.

Last week, April 17th, was Joel Murray’s birthday. Joel plays Freddy Rumsen, the drunk who discovered Peggy Olson’s knack for standing apart from the crowd, “seeing the benefit” of the product, and ultimately, for copywriting. I remember him as Greg’s goofy friend on Dharma and Greg.

And next week, April 29th, is Darby Stanchfield, who plays the oozing Helen Bishop. The AMC site/blog/thing just posted an interview with her. She’s been getting a lot of work over the last few years, and just nails it as Helen. And it’s more than simply a matter of how she works the pants…

(I’ve been working on a whole Helen Bishop post… gimme a few hours and come back for it.)

April birthday Kisses to both of you!

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.

Here’s a quick bit of parallel in the show that I hadn’t thought of before. Don grabs Betty. Betty reacts with a little fire in her eyes, but basically with passivity. Later, Betty slaps Helen.

So can we conclude that Betty was “really” slapping Don when she slapped Helen? A bit of deflected anger?

And then later the conversation with Francine, in which Francine lets off a litany of absolutely deranged reasons to hate Helen Bishop. De. Ranged. Add these two incidents together and it seems like this is who Helen is; a place for the married women to project all their fears, anxieties, and rage.

“I like redheads. Their mouths are like a drop of strawberry jam in a glass of milk.”

Forgive me, MM writers. I love you all.

But this episode, about which I have so much more to say, seems to have a big fat continuity issue.

Thursday #1
It is the end of the workday. Roger speaks to his wife about the weekend plans. He is then told by Bertram Cooper that the Nixon boys are coming in at the end of the week. Joan has a bag packed and is taking a train with her roommate Carol for a weekend away. No mention that she is taking a Friday off, but okay so far.

How do I know it’s Thursday? Don says to Peggy, trying to make sure she’s not working too late, “Just because tomorrow’s Friday, doesn’t mean I expect to be pulling your head off the keys in the morning”. (God, that line is a mouthful!)

That night, it’s drinks for Don and Roger, and then the disastrous dinner at the Draper’s.

Thursday #2
The next morning, Roger offers Don a bottle and an apology. At lunch Pete exchanges a chip-and-dip for a 22-caliber rifle.

At 4:30 there is a meeting to prep for the Nixon meeting.

That night Don comes home in time for dinner; this time it’s enough roast beef to feed the whole office.

That same night, Trudy removes Pete’s recently restored testicles.

Friday
The next morning, Don approaches Hollis for a favor. During the day, Pete spins his tale of hunting to Peggy, Betty slaps Helen, Francine pays a visit.

And of course, the lunch, the stairs, and the punchline.

And there they were; the Nixon people. End of the week, as scheduled.

I decided that it’s two Thursdays and a Friday, because there was nothing that felt ‘Friday’ about the middle day. Don went home on time. Although maybe the roast beef means Friday. So maybe it’s two Fridays.

Oysters, martinis and cheesecake is definitely a Friday lunch.

Either way, major fuck-up. What, they didn’t think they’d have detail-obsessed fans?

This post, via its title, is dedicated to the memory of Heath Ledger.

Let me say this. It was this episode that solidified my love for this show. I’d been watching the previews, all the behind-the-scenes stuff, for quite awhile, and was excited about the prospect of this show. And I definitely liked the first two episodes, but the jury was out. The whole thing could rely on clichés and stereotypes and time travel references like Don’t remark about ’some kind of magical machine that just makes copies’ in the pilot. Marriage of Figaro showed me that I didn’t have a clue as to what to expect. That this show felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before, that it wasn’t fucking around, that it was on its own ride, and yeah, I was along for it.

1. I love Rachel’s reaction to the chicken. While she herself resembles some kind of bizarre Gertrude McFuzz in that hat.

2. I love Rachel’s response to finding out Don is married. There are some who take issue with the fact that she jumped from one kiss to committed relationship, but I think she had it right; there was nothing casual about their connection. He says Don’t try to convince me that you were ever unloved. So her response of Well then am I supposed to live some life running alongside yours? to me, was so grounded. How many women would just close their eyes, kiss him again, and pretend it will all somehow work out? I saw right there (and not for the first time) what a whole, together woman she is.

3. I love that Don and Betty are fine. Through the entire morning of the party, when it is so obvious to us, because we are culturally informed, that every time Betty mentions the cake or any other chore, (and later the movie camera), she is actually freaking out and really wants to lunge, she remains sweet and composed. And with every request from Betty, we know that Don is a pressure cooker. But he never shows it. He remains good-natured (look how he handles the powder room moment). Rachel’s presence leads to what happens later, but this interaction… this is their life together. And they keep it terribly pleasant. (This starts to shift after a lot of drinks; see #7.)

4. I love that the birthday party has NOTHING to do with the kids. Betty prepares a killer spread, but it’s for the adults; she just puts out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the children. It is a party for the grownups; the kids are hardly an afterthought. There was supposed to be a clown, but they couldn’t get him, so the kids just run around inside and outside, playing on their own, with no planned activities. They are barely introduced to the adults, and that is reflected back to us, as they are also barely introduced to us, the audience.

5. I love Helen Bishop. What’s not to love? She reminds me of Rachel; she has killer foresight and the balls to speak on it (she puts that slimeball Carlton in his place, and fast). And she is liquid killer sexy, also like Rachel.

6. I love that after his kid is slapped by someone who isn’t him, after he asks ‘do you want some more’ (hitting), Carlton then tells his son to go get his mother to clean up the mess he made. His hugely pregnant mother, I might add.

7. Don has four beers before the party, by my count. Then drinks throughout, like everyone. He starts to become visibly affected when he is filming the party; this is when he finally appears agitated as well. I love that sitting on top of the cake box on the front passenger seat is an empty plastic cup… he had brought his drink with him for the ride to to HiTop.

8. I love what sounds to my unresearched ear as the anachronistic, We haven’t done birthday cake. (Nancy says this after her husband Chet suggests that they leave. Chet then follows with There’s not gonna be a cake. Am I the only one that knows that?)

9. I love that Betty’s hands, very subtlely, looks like they have gone numb while she is trying to cut the sorry looking frozen Sara Lee pie birthday cake thing.

10. What I love about this episode, what shocked and dismayed me upon the initial viewing, was that we stayed in Ossining. The first portion of the show was in and around Madison Avenue, and I assumed that it would go back there. I kept waiting for the scenes from the party to cut back into Monday at the office. It never did. It was… excruciating. I wanted to go back. This was awful. I felt like I was suffocating in this horrible world. And like I said, this was the moment when I recognized that this was unlike anything I’d ever seen on television before, and that I would never be able to predict where this show was going to take me, week after week.

Oh and fine. I can’t keep it to ten. I mean, I didn’t even mention Don at the train. But…

11) I love Don in his t-shirt building that playhouse. I’d offer to shower with him, too.

Francine. She is a wonder, always. But she’s married to an asshole. Conrad/Cornelius/whatever her husband’s name is (it’s Carlton—to ring your bell, he is the guy who hit on Helen Bishop at the birthday party in episode 3; the Marriage of Figaro). (That episode, which I promise to post about, is the one that got me off the fence. I was pretty sure that the show was a pure winner, but that one blew my mind. Right off my head. Or something.)

I have been curious for awhile what the friendship is between Francine and Betty. Betty is more formal and guarded with Francine than she is with Don, so it is her vacuous side that is more often exposed, and I have been curious as to how Francine perceives that. She certainly stood up for her over the slapping Helen thing. Francine feels kind of gutsy as a character, but she hasn’t noticed what a creep her husband is, and she hasn’t noticed how shallow Betty is (or comes across), OR how fragile she is.

And now we see that Francine is a wreck, perhaps for the first time. Postpartum much? She said she hasn’t been thinking straight since the baby came. She’s probably all but dried up, lactationwise… she certainly isn’t nursing. So okay, maybe she’s not getting much sleep. Goodness knows Cockles or whatever his name is ain’t getting up for 4 am feedings. But still, sleep deprived doesn’t lead you to wanting to serve up a big ol’ vat of grape Kool Aid to the whole family on Thanksgiving, does it?

It is in this episode that Betty declares to Don that Francine is like a sister to her. I wonder if that is true, and if it is, what the friendship means to each of the women; I wonder if this relationship will become more important to the show. At the same time, when Betty delivers the line to Don, it sounds like a dig. I think she is defending relationships in general. In her therapy session in the same episode, she tells Dr. Wayne that Don doesn’t understand family. Betty is rather insightful… as she awakens she makes statements like these, and tells some very simple but very big truths. She’s not suddenly getting smart, she’s starting to lift the veil between the place in her brain from where she functions (the good girl, the dutiful wife who knows better than to ask questions, the daughter who never thought a bad thought about her mother), and the woman who in many ways is an equal to Don, does match him in humor, and certainly has more than a clue. She’s been collecting clues for years, and she is starting to lay them all out and figure out what they mean. Regarding who she is, who Don is, and regarding their marriage.