I usually schedule my weekends in such a way that I don't watch Mad Men until late Sunday night/Monday morning. Consequently, I went into this episode having seen brief mentions of its brilliance on Twitter, Facebook, etc. (Actually, there is no "etc." It's just Twitter and Facebook.)
But they were right: pretty brilliant. Start with the use of flashforwards. Don passed out on the floor of what looks like a motel, sporting a nasty gash above his nose, Peggy in bed with someone whose name I won't reveal until below the spoiler warning, Betty lounging, looking serene, on a couch.
Most shows would tack on a quick "48 hours earlier" with the next scene, but Mad Men knows we're smart enough to say "OK, we're going to see how these characters got to these points." It's three interconnected stories about the three characters entering into a series of risky, short-term and questionable relationships.
It's a bleak, bleak hour, but one that's always watchable, mostly due to some great work by Jon Hamm, who has to take Don to some really ugly places this week.
Let's start with Don. He comes into work to find Conrad Hilton waiting. Hilton wants to hire Don, starting him off with three hotels in New York. Don's the hero of the office again, applauded by Harry, Pete, etc. and toasted by Sterling, Cooper and Pryce.
But Hilton -- or his lawyers, but really, they work for him -- has a problem: he wants Don to sign a contract. Don's not having it. It's against the Hobo Code. The rest of the episode, he seems like his skin is too tight. He snaps at Peggy (one of his ugliest moments ever), which leads her to go off and visit Duck Phillips -- still trying to get her and Pete away from SC -- and they end up sleeping together. It's not the lawnmower on the foot, but it's still pretty surprising.
Back at home, Don is even angrier when Betty tells him Roger tried to get her to convince Don to sign the contract. (Somehow I don't see him seeking revenge with oysters, alcohol and 20 flights of stairs, the way he did last time Roger intruded in the Draper marriage. I think we're beyond that.) He and Betty argue, and he goes out, drink still in hand, into the night.
He picks up two hitchhikers,a boy and girl. They claim they're on their way to Niagra Falls so that they can get married so the boy won't get drafted. It's this episode, more than any so far, that shows Mad Men drifting into The Sixties as we know them. Earlier, we see Pete talking up an aerospace account, and how they're preparing for a production onslaught, supplying planes and helicopters for Vietnam
So Don heads off with the hitchhikers, and for a moment it's like he's the what-not-to-do guy in a safe driving PSA, a blur of booze, pills -- supplied by the hitchhikers -- and no seatbelts. It's the end of the road that's more worrisome: the couple mugs Don -- with the help of the pills and leave him passed out face down. Somewhere in here, he hallucinates his hillbilly dad, who chastises Don for being a guy who works with "bullshit," rather than making anything.
Next time we see Don, he's at work, repeatedly mumbling "fender bender" to explain the bandage on his face. Bert Cooper is waiting for him, and Don signs the contract (we see the date is 7/23/63, which explains the episode title, which had been a mystery until now).
(Also, note that Cooper, like Hilton, sits in Don's desk. They both seem like slightly kooky grandfather types, but they're both sharks.)
"After all," Cooper says, "when it comes down to this, who is really signing this contract anyway?"
It's the first time since season one -- I think -- that Cooper has said anything about Don's secret.
Don wants one concession: no more contract with Roger Sterling. He goes home, tells Betty "I signed," then goes to bed, defeated.
Betty, meanwhile, is lounging on an antique sofa known as a "fainting couch." Her story begins with a meeting of the junior league, which is battling the construction of a giant water tank. Betty has a connection in the governor's office: Henry Francis, the man she met a few weeks ago, at the same party where Don met Conrad Hilton.
(Incidentally, that was the episode that had a lot of people -- myself included -- thinking "I wish there was more going on here." But now we see that two things that happened that week are paying off now, possibly in big ways.)
She and Henry agree to meet, to hike up to the reservoir that's going to be drained by the water tank. It's not clear what Peggy wants from this meeting -- she caves pretty easily when Henry says the project's been greenlit, but she seems a bit disappointed when Henry leaves early.
It's the same afternoon as a solar eclipse, and Betty tries to look and feels woozy. Henry jokingly suggests she buy the couch.
"Victorian ladies would get overwhelmed...corsets and things," he explains.
Betty's not wearing a corset, but how much distance is there really between her and a woman from 60 years earlier? At the end of the episode, we see her reclining on the fainting couch, stuck dead in the middle of the living room, which we learned from the interior decorator earlier, was the heart of house. Not anymore.
Some other thoughts:
- I wanted to say more about the eclipse,but I liked Alan Sepinwall's take on it. Still not sure what to make of Ms. Farrell and the way she acted toward Don in that scene.
- Can we make a new Emmy for really great lines, and just give it to John Slattery?
- We're more than halfway through the season, and like I said earlier, any doubts I had about this season have pretty much vanished in the last two weeks. August is almost here in 1963; what will November bring?
Tom Coombe
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