Mad Men isn't in the business of doing holiday-themed stories, so "The Gypsy and the Hobo" was about as close to a Halloween show as we were going to get.
And how perfect was it that Don's unmasking took place on the week leading up to Halloween? Scratch that. How perfect was this episode altogether? It was the type that reminds me what a great show Mad Men can be, and made me really anxious to see how the final two weeks are going to play out.
Even without that wonderful -- and in its quiet way, brutal -- scene between Don and Betty that seemed to take up most of the second half, we got more of Joan (how we've missed her), more of Roger, and Joan and Roger together again (well, on the phone, but still...)
But really, this episode belongs to Jon Hamm and January Jones, and god, how far have their characters come? For years, it was Don the adult and Betty the overgrown, spoiled child. Here, we saw those roles reversed: Betty knowing exactly what to say, Don rendered almost mute by her accusations. It was lovely acting on both their parts, but especially Hamm's. (It was amazing, the way his face changed when Betty told him "You know I know.")
And yet Don told the truth, something I didn't expect. (I don't think he really left anything I out. I mean, aside from "Since we've been married, I've had affairs with Sally's teacher, that comedian's wife, a department store manager, and an artist from the Village.")
Where all this leaves Don and Betty remains to be seen. In the final shot of the hour, they've taken the kids treak-or-treating, and a neighbor asks Don -- jokingly -- "Who are you supposed to be?" Don's face, at that moment, looks somewhat serene.
Actually, that question (Who are you supposed to be?) is sort of an important one for the rest of this episode, as both Roger and Joan deal with people who have a vision of what their lives are supposed to be like: Roger with Annabelle, the former client/lover who's realized -- too late -- that Roger was "the one"; Joan with Greg, who's so bent on becoming a surgeon -- after a failed attempt to become a psychiatrist -- that he's joined the Army to do it.
I was actually a little more interested in the problem Annabelle brought to Sterling Cooper (people who were turned off by the notion of her company's dogfood being made from horsemeat) than her relationship with Roger. It connected nicely to Don's story, at least on a thematic level. The line "The name has been poisoned" actually would have been a good title for this post. Still, we saw a different side of Sterling than we normally do: mature and sympathetic.
In Joan's case, Greg's big move -- he seems to regard Vietnam as an afterthought, but this is still 1963 -- came after a big fight between he and Joan. After he complains that she has no idea what it's like to want something your whole life and not get it (sure, because she was just waiting for some whiny, bitter creep to swoop on in*), she clocks him with a vase. Finally.
But of course, the vase to the head doesn't end things. Greg shows up with flowers and promises of a replacement vase and a new life for Joan as an army wife and god, it's just miserable, watching them together. You just feel trapped (and I love how the scenes between them were shot, in that tiny, tiny living room space). "The heart of the house," as Betty's decorator said a few weeks ago. None of the "hearts" in this show's homes seem very healthy.
*And as Alan Sepinwall points out on his blog, it's a line like this one that shows Greg would be one of the world's least insightful psychiatrists.
Other thoughts:
- Don tells Annabelle that he, too, has eaten horsemeat, but I imagine the two meals happened in different circumstances: For her, a delicacy. For him, a neccessity.
- Even though the big Betty/Don confrontation needed to happen, I felt a little bad for Suzanne, stuck out there in the car, and was a bit worried she'd show up looking for Don in the middle of it all.
- The song that played over the closing credits was "Where Is Love?" from the musical Oliver! My ears perked up a bit when I heard it, as I was part of my high school's production of the show back in 1995. (I played a clueless doctor who examines Oliver, and -- later on -- a member of an angry mob.) Of course, that's a question a lot of the characters were asking this week, even if they didn't use those specific words. And yes, Oliver! was the play the PPL execs were attending while their golden boy was getting his foot lawnmowered a few weeks back.
- Of course the Don's children dress as two symbols of complete rootlessness. Why not just make baby Gene's stroller into a Flying Dutchman replica?
- Glad to see parents of the previous generation were as unenthused about plastic Halloween costumes as mine were. (They let me get them, but rarely, and grudgingly.)
- What kind of awful marriage does that lawyer's daughter have?
Tom Coombe
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