In Hobo Code she was still a party girl (witness The Twist, and also ‘we all work so hard’). By Nixon vs. Kennedy, not only was she a tight-ass, but she had a reputation as such.

Ken: Draper has plenty of booze.

They look towards Peggy, working at her desk despite the party around her.

Ken: (continues) We could ask her to join us. That might soften her up.

So what happened?

Okay. In Hobo Code she finally gets to have sex with Pete again. And I’m sorry folks, goodness knows I am not a fan of Mr. Campbell, but it was kind of beautiful. Evidenced by the tenderness between them afterwards… even from him.

Later that day her copy is sold and the old boys club pours her a drink. And this combination of events brings out the most confident woman in the world. She already had shown us she has balls (‘We have manners!’) but on this day, it’s all just perfect.

And then Pete cruelly rejects her.

Next episode, Shoot. She rips her skirt and borrows an outfit from Joan. The next day is the exquisite scene between the two of them in which Peggy exhibits, again, balls of steel. And does appear undaunted by the fact that she’s getting fat (and being observed as getting fat).

And also, she’s now aiming towards an actual career goal.

In Long Weekend, she tells the bitch where to go.

Pete: Peggy, dear, I think I understand what this is about, but you’re not being professional right now.
Peggy: I cannot believe I am in this conversation.
Pete: You think this is easy for me?
Peggy: I don’t know. I don’t know if you like me, or if you don’t like me. I’m just trying to get along here. And every time I walk by, I wonder if you’re going to be nice to me, or cruel.
Pete: Cruel? What am I supposed to say? I’m married.
Peggy: Yes, I know. And I heard all about how confusing that can be. Maybe you need me to lay on your couch to clear that up for you again.
Pete: That’s some imagination you’ve got. Good thing you’re a writer now. What do you need me for?

(Maybe she’s thinking he’s right. What with the Relax-a-Cizor and all.)

So, more focused on career, and those wide eyes are growing sharper and sharper.

Indian Summer

Let’s see. She is asked by the guys to test and write about the “PER: Passive Exercise Regime” weight-loss belt. This becomes both a professional and personal journey. Her marketing instincts are shrewd, asking right off the bat if she is allowed to change the name. That shows a real nose for the bigger picture. Testing this product, as we all know, led her to the discovery of self-pleasure. What is also quite significant is that Don would not let her back down. She went, in one episode, from a woman who hadn’t masturbated, to a woman who was presenting, to a roomful of men, a product that had this pleasure factor.

Later, she approaches Don for a raise. And gets it. And gets permission to break it to Joan, which is a scene I’d pay to see.

And in the same episode she goes on a blind date. This is harder to get at. Her confidence, most times disarming, crosses over into transparently pretentious (and so perhaps it was her lack of confidence?) with this guy. He gets rude, she gets up, he tries to apologize, she’s not having it.

(The confidence theme comes back in the Wheel.)

So, in different forms, we are seeing her get a sense of her own worth.

Now, we haven’t solidified timelines, but Indian Summer is, I believe, October, and of course NvK is early early November. So what we didn’t see was perhaps a month of Peggy as acting ensign copywriter. But Weiner clearly wanted to show us that this is who she has become.

First, let me just say thanks to everyone for your kind words regarding my bad day yesterday. I’m feeling entirely well today! Kisses– rkl

In Long Weekend, in response to the Kennedy jingle, Harry says “It’s catchy like it gets in your head and makes you want to blow your brains out”.

Cut immediately to a family photo of John, Jackie and way down at the bottom, John John. But mostly you see the two of them, the black and white, and to me it immediately drew up the image of them in the car after he was shot. Maybe that was just me.

Chilling.

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.

Roger Sterling is like a walking sense of entitlement. He was more or less born into his job. His name, as he says in Red in the Face, is on the building, and he even acknowledges that makes him feel entitled. He thinks he can and should have any woman just for the taking, so that he is disgusting with the twins in Long Weekend (suggesting incest is A Bad Thing) and angry at Don for being more attractive in the bar in Red in the Face. How dare anyone usurp his entitlement?

He’s also really insecure, maybe because he hasn’t actually earned anything. He wants to restrict Joan; keep her in a birdcage, and that feels like both: entitlement and insecurity. Right of ownership combined with fear of losing her.

The most telling thing of all is the dialogue with Don in Shoot; Don considers the McCann-Erickson offer, Roger says he’d be afraid of failure. Don is not afraid. Don says he might leave advertising, Roger says “What else is there?” Don runs away, true, but he also runs forward; he remakes himself. And Roger can’t do that, he can only hang back. And diddle women to persuade himself he isn’t full of fear. Roger is a guy who doesn’t know what else there is.

We just received an email from a self-proclaimed long-time BoK lurker. (We love that more of you are de-lurking!)

She is an Emmy voter, and just received… ahh, screw it, I’ll just pull it from the email.

As a long-time “lurker” on your blog, I wanted to give you the heads up (if you’re interested) that as an Emmy voter I just received AMC’s Emmy “For Your Consideration” DVD package today containing six episodes each of “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men.” I was so excited that they sent half the season that of course it’s in my DVD player right now. The episodes AMC is sending out for consideration are as follows:

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”
“5G”
“The Hobo Code”
“Long Weekend”
“Nixon vs. Kennedy”
“The Wheel”

I wouldn’t want the job of narrowing the selection down! Can’t wait to vote for my favorite newcomer!

That is a lot of great stuff to pull from. A-freaking-mazing!

She gave me permission to print this, but I posted so fast I didn’t ask if I could print her name, so I didn’t. So R, feel free to out yourself if you like. And thanks for the scoop!

Kisses,

R & D

The president is a product, don’t forget that.

—Pete Campbell, Long Weekend

In Long Weekend, Joan posts a memo on the bulletin board that the office will be closed on Labor Day.

Which means that’s not routine? That people didn’t know whether or not the office would be closed?

It’s sort of baffling. Does Sterling Cooper have no stated holiday policy? Do employees simply not know what their days off will be? And is Labor Day actually optional?

I checked up on this. Labor Day has been a holiday for a very long time. Business have been closed on Labor Day for over a hundred years, and workers in an office such as Sterling Cooper would certainly expect and know well in advance that Labor Day was a long weekend (hence the title).

This hovers on the edge of goof. It’s more one of those cheap TV tricks to remind the viewers of what’s going on, and put Joan in the right place at the right time. It’s the kind of “goof” that you wouldn’t notice on a lesser show, but because Mad Men rarely relies on stupid trickery, it stands out.

Or I’m too obsessed. Either way.

I wrote the following yesterday. And then after I wrote it, I dug around AMC’s website.

I am so outraged. Like, speechless. (Well, my version of speechless is kind of word-heavy, but you get it.)

Those stupidheads at AMC are NOT GOING TO BE SHOWING MAD MEN AT ALL IN MAY. NOT AT ALL. NOT SUNDAYS AT MIDNIGHT, NOT WEDNESDAYS AT 3AM, NOT SATURDAYS AT 6AM TO COMPETE WITH ANGEL ON TNT, NOT ANYWHERE AT ALL.

Heard about this great new show but still haven’t gotten around to seeing it? Been waiting for the latest run to wind up, (which it just now has) and maybe you’ve even read that the first two episodes will be airing over the next two weeks?

WELL TOO BAD FOR YOU!!! Guess you’ll have to wait until July.

Way to build momentum, Jack. Or, what’s that other thing… LOSE ANY STEAM YOU HAVE WITH POTENTIAL NEW VIEWERS WHO WILL FORGET ABOUT YOU ONCE THEY START WATCHING NEW EPISODES OF HOUSE AND ER.

Anyway, I think this little intro perfectly sets up the rest of what I had prepared. Enjoy:

I’ve been thinking it’s time to recap AMC’s sins. Some of you are new, but also, like when your shitty boyfriend starts acting all sweet lately, you might be losing perspective.

Let’s take a moment, shall we, to think back to a simpler, happier time.

July, 2007. It all started so perfect. I, like so many others (well, there were like twelve of us, including Matthew Weiner’s mom) had been breathlessly awaiting the premiere of AMC’s new original series.

We watched. We were smitten. We were beholden. We were in its thrall.

(And in some cases, we were unemployed, and so in those early, blissful, income-free days of summer, we watched the episodes over and over. In what turned out to be an uncanny lack of foreshadowing, AMC was repeating each one all over its programming schedule, all week long, both nights and days.)

Okay also we told our friends (and in some cases, siblings) about it. And many of them wanted to see it, but wanted to wait until they could see it from the beginning. A respectable choice in these Netflixian times. We hoped at least for a Mad Men marathon to play catch-up with. (Apparently there was one fairly early in the initial season, perhaps pre-midway through, but I somehow missed it. Was certainly not well promoted.) As the season rolled on, and writers were striking so there was NOTHING ELSE ON TELEVISION, and Mad Men was beginning to receive accolades, AMC just kept sitting on their golden egg, wiggling around, proud of what they’d laid but unwilling to share.

(Yeah. No Mad Men marathon leading up to the season finale. Whatever.)

And then a blog was born. Basket of Kisses beginnings coincided with the blowup that was Peggy’s giving birth. We were going to give that child a home. A basinet of kisses, if you will.

(Okay that was just weird. But I’m having fun so it’s staying.)

And we wait with the collective bated breath for one week later, right there in its regular time slot of Thursdays at 10pm (with an encore at 11) for Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, the pilot.

And now here is the recap, with links to outraged post after outraged post, of what AMC has done wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong.

AMC You’ve Harshed My Happy
The first thing I notice is that the pilot is chopped up into smaller pieces. The commercials are in the wrong spots. Also, they have done away with the cool little branded ‘fun facts’ that appear between commercials and tie in with the advertising.

AMC You’re Harshing My Mellow
Week two I’m all set to watch Ladies Room, and they skip three episodes ahead to New Amsterdam.

AMC You are Damaging My Calm
Nothing new here, I just continue to rant my devastation over the unnecessary, premature editing.

AMC You are Wrinkling My Smooth
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water… they show episodes 4-6, then they skip to 10; Long Weekend. Included in what they skipped was Hobo Code!!! (An award-winning, revealing and important episode.)

AMC’s Got Stinking Paws
This is where I finally put it together that there were scenes deleted from the premiere airings. I knew they were chopping up the episodes, but I had assumed the content was still untouched, that it was simply a matter of shorter but more frequent commercial breaks (and shorter “acts” in between commercials). But no. Scenes and lines are missing. Not only that, but it has been this way since the very first. During the very first run, The 10pm airing was pristine and intact, and the 11pm was re-editing; missing scenes. Oh god, it still hurts to think about it.

AMC and I are barely on speaking terms.
So now the second run (if you can call it that, what with five missing episodes) is wrapping up, and what’s next? Not only are they showing it in the worst time slot known to time slots, but the AMC website buried the information. It’s like they don’t want people to find it. (It has since been reworded.)

AMC You are Perching My Nerves
This is just irksome. They are flooding the airways with Breaking Bad. Which is like, a great idea. Wish I’d thought of it!

AMC Schedule
And uh… this latest (midnight) run is almost done. You’d think your fans, both the loyal ones and the potentials, might want to hear some news about your future plans to air/not to air? Your scheduled for the airings (still in that same crappy time slot) for episodes 1 and 2, but can you maybe commit?

AMC You do NOT get points for this.
It hurts my heart. The AMC website is showing “deleted scenes” like it’s something to be proud of. And confusing the fuck out of viewers in the process.

Hope this helps. I am totally depressed.

Kisses,
Roberta

In Long Weekend, we see Don and Rachel connecting the dots. Maybe the first time I saw the episode his arrival at her door came from nowhere, or maybe I was just taken with their mutual attraction, but on closer examination, they are connecting at a deep level.

We arrive at Sterling Cooper in a Nixon campaign meeting. Don wants to set aside current ad ideas and tell “the story” of Nixon. He calls Kennedy “a recent immigrant who bought his way into Harvard,” On the other hand,

“Nixon is from nothing. A self-made man, the Abe Lincoln of California, who was Vice President of the United States six years after getting out of the Navy. Kennedy, I see a silver spoon. Nixon, I see myself.”

He sees himself. He sure does; he came from nothing, went into the Army, came out a new man (literally) and in a short time (six years?) he was a big success.

Later the same day, there’s a Menken Department Store meeting. There, Don kind of poo-poos Abe (there’s that name again) Menken’s history of coming from nothing (like Lincoln; like Nixon). Rachel takes umbrage:

“Excuse me, this is not some phony story you people print in your Fourth of July circulars. My father actually started with nothing and he made it into everything we’re talking about. Who here can say that?”

Don. Don can say that. And although Rachel doesn’t know that about Don, he must feel like she’s looking right through him, and like he and she are the only two people in that room who understand each other.

So of course, that’s the night they sleep together. But more importantly, that’s the night he finally tells the truth about himself to another human being. And it’s so important, so powerful, that I offer it here in its entirey:

“You told me your mother died in childbirth. Mine did too. She was a prostitute. I don’t know what my father paid her but when she died they brought me to him and his wife. And when I was ten years old he died. He was a drunk who got kicked in the face by a horse. She buried him and took up with some other man. I was raised by those two sorry people.”

He came from nothing. She understands. She kisses his hair.

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.