Mad Men: Just Like the Olden Days

I'm starting to think Mad Men would do well to spend a little more time at the office.  It's not that I watch this show expecting it to unfold like The Shield, or that I'm not enjoying all the small character moments.

 But, as Dave Itzkoff put it in the New York Times: "When your biggest revelation of the night is that Pete and Trudy Campbell are pretty good dancers, it may be time to pick up the pace."

 Spending more time in at Sterling Cooper -- where the British are keeping the Americans on a tight financial leash, where Pete and Ken are battling for the same job, where Peggy is blossoming and Joan is struggling -- might help liven things up a bit. And it would save us all from another repeat of "Sally Draper and the Case of the Missing Five Dollars."

 

 That said, I enjoyed some of what "My Old Kentucky Home" had to offer. I liked all the ways it evoked a bygone age (and by that, I mean one that was already gone in 1963): Gene reads -- or has Sally read -- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Don meets a fellow party guest who can remember New Mexico before it was a state; Don and this guest also share "Old Fashioneds." Paul and his friend/dealer talk about their days at Princeton; Joan's dinner guest remarks that the accordian playing reminds her of "the olden days," when her mother would play the piano in the evening.

And of course Roger Sterling's party is, as Sal puts it, like going back in time, with people doing the Charleston and Roger performing in blackface.

 While I agree with the New York Times piece about the show needing to pick up the pace, I have to disagree that Don isn't turned off by Roger doing a blackface routine. I think he's bothered because he thinks Roger is acting foolish, blackface or not. Don's a fairly enlightened guy, but he's not that enlightened.

 In the midst of all this looking backward, we have Peggy, still moving forward, smoking her first joint and brainstorming a good idea for the Bacardi campaign.

 (Weed apparently doesn't affect her the way it does her fellow copywriters. Paul -- who says rum reminds him of Cuba, which reminds him of the Cuban Missle Crisis -- gets paranoid and Smitty gets goofy, coming up with "Bacar D. Eisenhower.")

 Her new secretary might disapprove -- and could just be legitimately worried about Peggy -- but Peggy, at the moment, feels like she can have it all. She may be headed for a fall eventually, but right now, seeing her bloom is the best part of the show.

 Some other thoughts:

• Even though Joan's story had the least screen time, there's never a good reason not to have a picture of Christina Hendricks. This was the first glimpse we've gotten of Joan's homelife with Greg since he raped her late last season, and we were sort of led to believe she was living under his thumb. But this episode showed us otherwise, although she's clearly unhappy. And are we to assume Greg had a patient die during a procedure?
• As I suggested above, the subplot involving Sally stealing the five dollars from her grandfather was probably the worst Mad Men has ever had.
• A lot of people have already suggested that "Connie," the party guest Don shares a drink with, was supposed to be Conrad Hilton, founder of the Hilton Hotel chain. Pretty cool, but I hope Mad Men leaves the real life cameos to a minimum.

 Tom Coombe

Comments

[Peter Haley]

I enjoyed this episode greatly (much more than last week.) I feel as if Matt Weiner is taking me through a tour of this era just prior to the cultural revolution (and during it.) But most of his characters are being dragged kicking and screaming into this future. Since I wasn't (to the manor) born until 1967, I feel like it is a story I do not know. So I'll let him take me to the places that best tell this story.

I enjoyed the Sally story because I think it gave Gene a humanity I hadn't seen before. He still has moments of lucidity amongst his decline towards Alzheimer's. And he delivers the most prophetic line, "just wait, all hell's gonna break loose."

You and others have figured out that Greg must have killed someone during a procedure. I didn't realize it was that bad a flub (but I think you are right.) I typically don't agree with Mo Ryan's opinions (Chicago Tribune) of a lot of shows (through I read her all the time) but her word for Greg fits him to a tee: "CreepRapistHusband."

"Bacar-di Eisenhower" was my favorite pitch (but I never met a pun I didn't like.)

I had thought that Peggy was the one destined to win the Accounts manager position (as Pete noted all the O's next to clients names in episode one. But she seems to be more on the Draper track now. I live vicariously through her on Mad Men.

Keep up the good work, Tom. My favorite show's aren't complete until I read your take on them.

[Tom]

I don't know for sure that he killed someone, but the operation they refer to (a pneomonectomy [sp?]) is the removal of someone's lung, so it's pretty serious.