Hilarious. This was sent to me from Joe Bua of I am a TV Junkie, who is my life partner (well, maybe in some other life). He keeps up with Mad Men and with us as well as anyone.

Just read it. It’s perfect as is. No need for me to chime in.

Well, okay. Except to say that I keep finding errors in all these articles. I left a comment on one of them. I can’t remember which ones say what, because there have been so many. One called Pete ‘Paul’ about sixteen times and, as funny as that is, especially for those that remember Sterling’s line in Red in the Face, this wasn’t meant to be funny; it was an article from a country who was just discovering the show and was only a review of the pilot. Another article said that the DVD release date was July 7th, when it’s the 1st. And that’s a big blunder.

I do remember Remember WENN, and most people don’t. It seems like AMC is starting a new chapter with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, so I never feel compelled to make that correction.

Point is, they clearly need the direction of the know-it-alls.

And that, my friends, concludes this week’s episode of No Need For Me to Chime In.

the end by rkl.

Roberta and I have been keeping a folder of potential anachronisms. It’s a very well-written show, of course, and therefore a very small folder. Here’s what we’ve got:

In 5G, Midge says to Don:

It must be so intense above 14th Street.

That strikes me as something we didn’t start saying until the 1980s. Calling things “intense” sounds kinda druggy/trippy; maybe mid-70s but I don’t believe earlier. I’m interested in any memories of the usage of this word in that way. Anyone?

In Red in the Face, there are two military phrases. First Betty says to Francine,

You’re my friend, are you here to do recon?

Later, after Roger throws up, Bert Cooper says to the Nixon guys,

Let’s let Roger regroup.

“Regroup” in particular sounds a little off for 1960, not something you’d say about one person. I’m guessing here, I’m not a linguist and I wasn’t alive at the time.

Thoughts?

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.

From Red in the Face:

One minute you’re drinking in a bar and they come and tell you your kid’s been born, the next thing you know they’re heading off to college.

]]> http://madmenmad.wordpress.com/2008/04/20/how-about-a-little-sunday-rogerism/feed/ 18 starsandthemoon http://madmenmad.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/don-draper-is-not-a-womanizer/ http://madmenmad.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/don-draper-is-not-a-womanizer/#comments Mon, 31 Mar 2008 14:43:56 +0000 Deborah Lipp http://madmenmad.wordpress.com/?p=325 ]]>

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.

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.

I just figured something out: Betty has a clear vision of who she is. The thing is, she very rarely expresses that vision; she very rarely even allows herself to know she has that vision.

In Shoot, she has perhaps her most revealing therapy session. She talks about how important it was to her mother that Betty be beautiful, how she pushed her in that direction. But then, when Betty became a model, her mother disapproved strongly; called her “a prostitute” (which is holy shit, pretty nasty).

Now we see her anger at her mother, and also her anger at Don (although they don’t discuss that). Just as mother tried to stop her from modeling, Don succeeded at stopping her (by getting her pregnant and marrying her and moving her to the suburbs, away from the Manhattan modeling world). As she tells the story of the end of her modeling career, her voice gets flatter, less animated, sadder word-by-word (great acting, that).

She wants to model: She comes home from therapy knowing that. She’s excited, animated, and ultimately, aroused. Now, I’ve talked about how passive Betty’s sexuality is, but after a modeling job offer, after a day of power and acknowledgement, she is aggressive. It is she who sits in Don’s lap, she who kisses first, she who says “Let’s go upstairs.” And when Don, very turned on, suggests they do it in the living room, she is totally good with that.

So we see a woman who is acting on her vision of who she is. Betty knows she is beautiful, and she knows that gives her power. She admits to Francine in Red in the Face that she enjoys that power. Jim Hobart handed her a vision of power when he offered her a job, the gay art director at McCann-Erickson reinforced that power throughout the photo shoot.

…and then it went away. And Betty said she never really wanted it, how could she, when she has “all this”? She’s back to flat again, saying “all this” without enthusiasm, without a gesture or a smile or eye contact. All this. Ossining and Bobby and Sally and Polly and Don. All this.

She is depressed because she is suppressing rage, that much is obvious. But she’s also depressed because she’s suppressing her vision. Betty knows who she is. She’s a beauty. She’s Grace Kelly. And she’s not supposed to be Grace Kelly. She’s supposed to be June Cleaver. The core of her suffering, I think, is not her rage, but her knowledge. She’s really Grace Kelly and every day she has to pretend she’s not.

Elevator in the Chrysler Building. I pass by these every day. Pretty!

Funny story.

I work in mid-town Manhattan, on the east side. My building is attached to the Chrylser Building; there is a tunnel connecting the two.

I work on the 18th floor. A couple weeks ago, we expanded into some of the offices on the 17th floor. I only need to go down there a few times a week, and I always take the elevator. I’ve heard there are stairs, but haven’t paid a lot of attention.

So the other day, (Wednesday), I’m walking toward the elevator, and I see, tucked down a little hall-let, a door marked Staircase. So I go for it.

I walk down the flight of stairs till I see the door marked 17th floor.

It is locked.

There is a sign that says that entry is granted on the 15th and 18th floors.

I walk up to the door to the 18th floor.

It is locked.

I knock, but not with any real conviction, because it’s not really near where people are.

My cell phone is back at my desk.

And I’m already thinking about Mad Men, even though I know that regardless of how this plays out, I will not be walking up any stairs.

I walk down to the 15th floor and go to the door.

It is locked.

I am full-on upset. It’s scary in there, it’s a little smelly, and it goes round and round. Plus there’s the whole embarrassment factor.

I continue walking down. very. slowly.

Because I am not feeling my best. I’m halfway through a course of antibiotics and not quite recovered from all that ails. So I am being quite cautious around the notion of dizziness and vertigo.

Every few floors there is a door with a sign that says that you can enter here. But every one–Just Kidding! This must be all pre-9/11. This is the kind of stupid thing that has happened in Manhattan. Gee. I feel so secure.

Down, slowly, stepping, poising, filled with apprehension and a bit of malaise.

And also? It’s kind of hard.

As I approach the door at the 1st floor, it occurs to me only then that I might be seriously, royally, movie-scene screwed. I pull the door handle.

It is locked.

I’m heading to the basement.

The next level the door opened. Dumped me out onto the street (where there was a stanchion blocking the doorway, which fortunately was not too heavy for me to move out of my way.

Now I go back into the building, but I don’t have my scan-y card with me. But I see someone I know who had just scanned in, and he happens to be our messenger (we have shared services with another location, and this guy just goes back and forth all day, and so the security guys know him), who came back and got the guy to scan me in. If he hadn’t been there, security would have had to call my office, to my further humiliation.

And I felt a little sore.

But here is the thing.

The next day? Holy crap I could hardly walk. Turns out that, while not so aerobically challenging as walking up 23 flights of stairs, walking down those stairs was quite a workout. Especially to me, who does not work out. I do yoga, but these muscle groups seem a little different… also, because I’d been sick, I hadn’t practiced in over a week, so most of my strength had regressed to goo.

Today is Saturday. I still have pain. Walking down stairs is particularly difficult. Kind of wild. Now I’m wondering if it would have been less stressful had I just run down each flight. I suspect the slowness as I fought gravity contributed.

But anyway. Other than all its trauma, I thought that, in the wake of all this discussion of Red in the Face, it was pretty funny.

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 re-watched Red in the Face last night, and I kept getting a feeling like the beat is off. Episode director Tim Hunter has done some of MM’s best episodes, and some other great television as well. I can’t put my finger on it.

Take the slap: Betty and Helen talk. Betty does not appear to understand what Helen is upset about. Then Betty slaps Helen. Just like that. There’s no pause, there’s no sudden recognition or understanding or indeed anger on Betty’s face. There’s no moment of warm-up. Just talk slap. Like that.

Or Pete sitting in the dark with the gun while Trudy yells off-camera. It’s a great scene, a great shot. But it feels like it’s in a different show. There’s no other scene in any Mad Men episode remotely like that. It’s like it’s playing to a different music.

Or the hunting fantasy scene, which is brilliant, but let’s face it, the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen on television (and I’m counting the dancing dwarf on Twin Peaks).

The overall impression, for me, is an episode that only feels like Mad Men about half the time.