I did very much like “Look to the Ant,” last week’s episode that ITunes mislabeled “Look AT the Ant,” which I find funny for some reason. Well, I liked most of it. I’ve come to the conclusion that I like neither the character of Maggie nor the actress who plays her, based not just on her subplot in this episode, but on one line reading — yeah, probably superficial, but still. When Will compliments her at the beginning of this episode, saying she looks nice, not that she doesn’t always look nice, and she responds, “I heard you were good at pattern reading,” the way she delivers the line makes it seem like a total non sequitur. The emphasis is all wrong; it’s on “pattern reading” rather than “heard,” and there’s very little expression on her face when she says it. This is such a minor thing, but it BUGGED me.

(You saw what I did there, right?)

The rest of the episode was great and well plotted. I liked how it took us from Kale breaking into Will’s apartment, Maggie snooping around in Will’s office (because she reports to Kale, remember), Will going over to Kale’s for dinner which conveniently gets him out of the apartment so that bugs could be planted, while at the same time giving him information and claiming to point him in the right direction when he can.

But which is the right direction? What is Kale really up to?

And I liked that this episode brings up another clue that links Will and Katherine’s investigations: Atlas MacDowell owned a subsidiary that employed Edward Roy, the man Kale told Will he should be investigating, and Tom Rhumor served on Atlas MacDowell’s board — as did the professor who killed himself, who also happened to have a four-leaf clover when he died. This is the sort of mystery stuff I love. Especially since the paperweight Katherine finds, that says “Happy Holidays from Atlas MacDowell” or something, is the same paperweight that Will finds in Spangler’s office in the following episode.

Before I get into that episode, though, one other thing I loved about “Look to the Ant”: Will confronting the guy tailing him. I loved that even though he had the gun, it’s not what he used to intimidate the guy. Nope, it was all the information, all the databases, he has access to. And then *click* goes his camera phone. What a great scene.

Sadly, there were hardly any comparable scenes in last night’s episode, “The Truth Will Out.” The whole concept of the FBI lockdown was sort of a joke. Would they really shut down an agency just to find a mole? Wouldn’t they want to find out who the mole was in a more covert way, rather than announcing to everyone YOU HAVE A LEAK? The whole premise was just illogical and flimsy — even if it did lead to some great scenes with Miles.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole thing was a setup, though, in which case I’m still not sure I like it — because if it is a total coverup for something, you would think all the analysts at API would figure that out — this is NOT proper procedure. But there were a few things that happened during the polygraphs that sent up red flags for me:

1. Kale hesitates before answering the question, “Are any of your analysts capable of running a covert operation.” Now, he’s already said that he always passes these things with flying colors, and he knows the guy asking the questions — something else I find suspect, since I would think that you wouldn’t want to have a pre-existing relationship between polygrapher and polygraphee, but it would seem as though this guy has administered the polygraph to Kale on more than one occasion. So I wonder now whether the polygraph thing was more a way for the FBI to tell API what THEY knew. Or at the very least, Kale’s hesitation would send a message to the FBI, that in fact there IS an analyst capable of running a covert operation (or, at least he thinks he is.)

2. Tanya, after flubbing up on the first question (IS her real name Tanya MacGaffin?) is later asked whether she removed a white paper from the building. And I thought THIS was the reason for the lockdown, because a white paper DID go missing, and we know that Spangler is the one who took and shredded it. And curiously enough, we see nothing of Spangler’s poly.

3. The leak winds up not having anything to do with the missing white paper at all, but with some financial guy using some sort of insider information for personal gain. I don’t know. It felt a little whatever.

And I’m not all that crazy about the subplot with Will’s neighbor, how I think we’re supposed to think that she’s spying on him, and maybe she is, or maybe he thinks she is but she just thinks he’s cute, and this might lead to some sort of awkward situation, but I find the whole thing completely uninteresting.

But what I did like was the way Tanya, Grant and Miles made progress on the George Boeck case, figuring out that the woman from the wedding is the mysterious third person in the photo. And I liked that Will finds a CD recording of David and Ed, in which David tells Ed that Spangler’s running “some kind of unsanctioned op,” and has Ed promise to tell Will to stay out of it. I assume this conversation took place right before David was killed, like right after Will brings the crossword clue to David in the very first episode. But what I don’t understand is why David would set clues around for Will if he didn’t want Will to investigate. Maybe he knew that Will wouldn’t listen, as Ed clearly didn’t. But then David’s “Oh god, there’s someone” at the end of the recording felt false to me.

So I don’t know. It was the weakest episode of the season so far, I thought. What about you?

Related posts:

1. Rubicon: The Dots and the Lines
2. Rubicon: The Next Great TV Show?
3. Rubicon: From Letters to Numbers

1. I absolutely, totally LOVED the whole “When Sterling Met Draper” story, whether it’s mostly fact or mostly fiction (Doesn’t really matter, does it?). LOVED that Don got his job in advertising by pretending that Roger had offered him the job (at least, that’s my take on what happened. I think it’s open for debate, but I figured the look on both their faces in the elevator at the end was indicative that Don had pulled something over on Roger).

2. Don’s lost weekend was absolutely, totally cringeworthy, but I admire the way it was done. At the time I wondered whether this would be Don’s rock bottom, but I wasn’t counting on it.

3. Peggy is awesome. I got a huge kick out of watching her call Stan’s bluff, stripping down to nothing. My sense of her is that she’s spent the first 23 or so years of her life being rather prudish and doesn’t WANT to be that way, but isn’t sure of how to be any different until she’s confronted with other options.

4. Welcome back, Ken! I loved this story, the great scene between Pete and Lane, the equally compelling scene between Pete and Ken in which Pete basically says, “Can you work FOR me?” and Ken says fine, except that smile on his face could be interpreted as “I’m just going to smile and nod, bide my time, and then GUT YOU LIKE A FISH.”

Now. “The Suitcase.” Or as I started to call it halfway through, “Six Rounds of Don vs. Peggy.” I love watching these two so very much and I was thrilled that most of the episode it was just Elizabeth Moss and Jon Hamm together, but I have to say that at the start of the episode I was wondering whether the writers had a bet going to see how hateful they could make these characters and still keep us watching. Harry Crane is such a . . . such a . . . such a DICK right now. And Mrs. Blankenship’s racist remark about throwing a dollar bill out of her window is probably in keeping with her character, but ugh! I was afraid the whole episode would be uncomfortable pants.

I was also not happy to see Duck’s return, because it did set up Peggy’s choice as between the drunk she was sleeping with and the drunk she’s working for, and when has Peggy ever NOT chosen Don? It seemed a little contrived to me, but then there were a couple other things that this story line did: first, is it me or did the first conversation between Duck and Peggy imply that they were still occasionally sleeping together? That maybe it had been a while but Peggy wasn’t being exclusive with Mark? Second, it would seem as though Duck’s drunken shenanigans at the Clio award ceremony led to his dismissal from Gray — I don’t believe for a second that he willingly left. Third, his present of business cards to Peggy — dubbing her the creative director of the new agency he just made up — proves that he, like Mark, doesn’t know Peggy at all. And she sees through his ploy, tells him she can’t take the offer seriously because he’s been drinking, which of course he denies, while he’s holding a scotch. I could have done without the final confrontation between them, the fight between two drunks clearly meant to parallel the Liston-Clay bout, but it is the only time that Duck’s had the upper hand with Don, so fine.

Besides, the verbal sparring between Don and Peggy was far more captivating, even surprising at times. I was riveted by these scenes — the arguing, the yelling, the retreat to their separate corners, the sharing, the understanding. I also liked the smaller moments — Peggy starting to take her coat off in her office and then thinking twice, not willing to let Don think she’s ready to stay for as long as it takes to get the work done, all the back and forth about whether it mattered that it’s Peggy’s birthday — first it does, then it doesn’t, then Don’s buying her dinner . . . none of it is logical taken together, but it’s an accurate portrayal of how two people who’ve been working together as long as they have, who are so alike in so many ways yet not entirely equals, relate to each other.

And the tape! Oh, the TAPE! So THAT’S who Dr. Lyle Evans is! How hysterical has Matthew Weiner been for the last couple weeks after everyone had an Internet freakout because Lyle Evans isn’t a real person from the 60s and it seemed as though the Mad Men writers were having a joke at our expense? Huge payoff, there. Brilliant. As is the idea that Roger and Mrs. Ida “Queen of Perversions” Blankenship had a thing. And this shared moment between Don and Peggy, his olive branch to her, heralds in a new age for them — a more open and trusting relationship on both personal and professional grounds. There were a few surprising moments in that — I didn’t expect Peggy to tell Don that everyone in the office thinks they’ve slept together, or that her mother thinks Don fathered Peggy’s child (which never occurred to me, but of course she would think that); neither did I expect her to hint that she knows what happened with Allison. And I would not have expected Don to break down in front of Peggy AND allow her to comfort him. These are people who don’t know everything about each other but now know ENOUGH to really get each other. I am 98% sure that I am not the only person who cried a little bit at Don’s vulnerability, and at the final scene between them, where Don takes Peggy’s hand and then Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bleeker Street” starts up. Good GOD, y’all. Great episode, or GREATEST episode?

(James Poniewozik writes about Don and Peggy’s relationship far more elegantly done than this. Go read it.)

Random observations:

* Not really random, but what do you think the odds are that Don’s going to sober up a bit now? Or maybe Anna’s death (RIP, Anna) will send Don even further into the bottle? The impression I got by the end of this episode was that maybe this would be his turning point, that maybe things would get better for him now, but I think it could go either way. I want him to be better, so I could be projecting.

* Another small moment, but Peggy’s “Hello, Ma” slayed me. And her “How long are you going to go on like this” to Don slayed me in a different way.

* I like that outside of her scenes with Don, Peggy’s almost one of the guys now. So that when she helps Don to the bathroom there’s a second layer of funny to her hesitation over which bathroom to bring him to, and her sort of awed/disgusted look at the urinals. She may not have been on a plane ever, but that Peggy Olson is going places!

* “Yes, I’m that important.” Oh, Mark. That was funny, but you’re really not.

* When Peggy says “I know what I’m supposed to want but it just never feels right,” I thought that was a nice little callback to Dr. Faye’s remark that her job is all about figuring out the balance between what people want and what’s expected of them.

* “Why is there a dog in the Parthenon?” “That is a roach. Let’s go someplace darker.” — First mice, then roaches. Next week: bed bugs!

Related posts:

1. Mad Men: The Beauty Myth
2. Mad Men: Of Hair and Sex
3. Mad Men: I don’t hate Christmas, I just hate THIS Christmas

If last week focused on getting to know Truxton Spangler a little better, this week brings us closer to the enigma that is Kale Ingram, though not very close to figuring him out. (In fact, you can’t spell “Kale Ingram” without “enigma.” Did I just blow your mind?) Who the hell is this guy? He seems to get all the great lines, and somehow delivers each one with such careful precision that you might think everything he says is some sort of code.

“I have the immune system of a hydra.”

“So much darkness, so many shadows.”

“I would hate to see you involved in any mayhem.”

That last line in particular is a huge deal, as it intimates that there IS mayhem afoot.

We know that Ingram knew Donald Bloom in Beirut, as they both worked on the assassination case from the 80s, the one with the crossword puzzle go code that Ed Bancroft wrote. Ingram and Bloom also had a thing going on back then. It appears that Ingram recommended Bloom for his current assignment, but it’s not clear what this assignment is. Bloom refers to all the traveling he’s been doing, “stitching together this very complicated operation,” but is it another assassination?

Theory #1: Bloom engineered the train crash that killed David Hadas. The crossword puzzle clue was about four-leaf clovers, which as a go code could easily refer to the highly superstitious David. How it also relates to Tom Rhumor is unclear right now. And how David’s death requires all that globetrotting is also unclear, unless part of the operation involves leaving a false trail of bread crumbs to keep Will confused.

Theory #2: Bloom’s new gig has something to do with the Yuri Popovich/George Boeck case, again as some sort of false trail. I don’t think this case is a red herring, but “stitching together” to me means fabrication, that they’re creating something that they want to be seen to deflect attention from the stuff they don’t want to be seen.

How does my theory relate to Tanya’s analysis that Boeck is the one they want to follow? Maybe this was a way to test her ability. Ingram plants the idea in Will’s head that Tanya’s a bit off, so Will gives her the opportunity to show her stuff, and her analysis winds up being accepted without question by Spangler. I think Tanya expected more of a fight, particularly as Grant and Miles completely tear into her, so Spangler’s immediate OK strikes her — and me — as a little suspicious.

As for Tanya’s drinking problem…I don’t know. I did like Ingram’s “free spirit/too free with her spirits” wordplay. (He really does get all the great lines.) I find myself less interested in everyone’s private life. Maggie’s husband, Miles’ marriage, Tanya’s drinking — something feels off about all of it, as though these character issues are tacked on to make them more interesting to us, but I’m starting to wonder whether they drag the story down. But maybe it’s too early to tell.

I liked the scene between Will and Maggie even less. Were they trying to build sexual tension where there really shouldn’t be any? Though I was glad that Will wound up not saying anything, particularly since Maggie reports to Ingram. Way to use that paranoia for good, Will.

Speaking of . . . did Will tell Ed Bancroft to stand down and stop trying to connect the dots because he’s concerned about Ed’s welfare? Ed did look like he was one step away from the deep end at the beginning of the episode, and was positively manic when Will went to visit him later. Or did Will think Ed’s house was maybe bugged and was only saying “stand down” to throw whoever’s following him off the trail? It could be both, but I’m inclined to think it’s more the former, that Will wants to protect Ed. It’s true that Will is paranoid and suspicious of everyone and everythign, but had that visit taken place AFTER the charity function, AFTER Ingram says “avoid the mayhem” then I’d be more willing to buy that Will thinks Ed’s place is bugged. Even though Ed’s place could still be bugged.

What I liked about this scene, actually, was the way it suggested not just that the work of dot-connecting can lead a person to madness, but that the pressure to find the RIGHT pattern creates the risk of seeing ANY pattern — or in other words, trying to connect the dots could lead to creating dots that shouldn’t be there. If it’s supposed to be a picture of a daisy, but you want it to be an elephant, you’re going to put more dots in there to make the picture come out the way you want it to. I’m not saying that this is what Ed’s doing, but his whole “JFK was assassinated in Dallas, not Houston, but Texas has oil” comes close. And I think we’re supposed to believe that Will will maintain a clearer head, as he works with his own dots at the end of the episode.

And we find out that Spangler is responsible not only for destroying the copy of “The Houston Problem” (that title makes me chuckle), but also for the guys tailing Will, and now that he’s heard Will telling Ed to back off, he wants the focus to shift to Katherine (presumably based on the information given by James Wheeler concerning her inquiries about the townhouse and MRQ Alternatives). I loved, loved that it was Ingram shadowing Spangler. It indicates that Ingram only knows some of the stuff that Spangler does — he recommended Bloom to Spangler, but maybe didn’t know why. And I think he was tipped off that something was off when he spotted Will obviously tailing Bloom. The plot, it thickens. I love it.

I also liked that Katherine and Will finally meet, sort of. Obviously there’s a connection between what Will’s investigating and what Katherine’s investigating, but their meeting confirms it, even if we still don’t know what the connection is. I’m looking forward to watching how this unfolds.

So if MRQ Alternatives doesn’t make clothing anymore, what DO they do? Katherine’s exchange with the foreman or whatever was the first time I was frustrated by this show. She asks a direct question, “What do you make,” the foreman answers, “Well, we used to make clothes,” and Katherine doesn’t follow up on that. Gah! But then she finds a newspaper clipping about the death of a professor having been ruled as suicide and wonders, as we do, just what exactly Tom was keeping that clipping for.

Related posts:

1. Rubicon: Irreversible Decisions
2. Rubicon: From Letters to Numbers
3. Rubicon: Security Lockdown

I have a feeling that last night’s Mad Men episode, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” is going to be one that needs to simmer for a little bit before I pronounce judgment. I was uncomfortable during most of the episode and I think I started to misinterpret that discomfort as dislike, when really the episode is probably just as brilliant as previous episodes and if I think about it for a few days I will come to recognize that.

I also need to get this out of the way: SALLY DRAPER’S HAIR IS SO CUTE. OMG.

But, OK. To have Sally cutting her hair and masturbating (for the first time? I’m not sure) in the same episode seems both perfect and a little too perfect. Does that make sense? The cutting of hair is supposed to be, I think, a cultural marker of a woman’s sexual maturation. This is understood intuitively — Sally tells Phoebe that she wanted to look pretty, and Phoebe also understands that Sally wanted to look older. But it also made me think of The Rape of the Lock. (I know, of all things, but bear with me.) Pope’s mock-heroic epic poem about a man cutting off a lock of a woman’s hair likens that act to sexual violation in more than just the title.

What Wonder then, fair Nymph! thy Hairs shou’d feel
The conqu’ring Force of unresisted Steel?

Furthermore, Sally’s hair experiment garners more shock and disapproval (that SLAP, so hard that both Don and Henry go “Whoa!”), it seems, than her “public” act of masturbation (yes, she was technically in public, but the other girls were asleep, as we see her check. She also cut her hair in private. I’m just sayin’). While it’s possible that Betty is too humiliated to smack Sally again, or is simply at a loss and can only threaten to cut Sally’s fingers off, I think it’s telling that there isn’t a greater explosion over it — but then the sexual transgression has already occurred, with the haircut.

Or I could just be full of crap and the writers were only thinking about Judy Blume’s Deenie, in which not only does Deenie masturbate while in the bath (though Blume never uses that word), but she also hacks off her hair because the back brace she has to wear to fix her scoliosis makes her feel ugly.

(So my mind went to Pope before Blume. Once an English major, always an English major.)

Anyway. I am also sure that Sally views being sent to a psychologist as a form of punishment, particularly since none of her parents go with her on the first visit. What really killed me, out of all of this, is that Sally’s feet don’t reach the floor when she’s sitting in Dr. Edna’s waiting room. That actually choked me up a little.

I am glad, however, that Sally has a psychologist. We all knew she’d need one at some point. I am equally glad that Betty has a psychologist who will not tell her husband everything. I did read that correctly, right? Dr. Edna suggests to Betty that they meet once a month or so to check in? If, as Betty confirms, the purpose of these visits is not to discuss what Sally talks about, it stands to reason that these visits are for Betty’s benefit.

I understand why Betty was reluctant to discuss her previous therapy experience with Henry, and why she initially thinks it won’t do Sally any good — Dr. Wayne’s betrayal of her confidence back in Season 1 is still shocking to me. And I like that by the time she sits with Dr. Edna, Betty’s able to understand how the events of the past year might have taken their toll on Sally. Even though she still manages to make it all about her:

Betty: I feel like Sally did this to punish me somehow for everything.
Dr. Edna’s face: Srsly?

I was also impressed that Betty correctly pinpoints the beginning of these changes in Sally’s behavior (not that I think masturbation is bad behavior or in any way not normal, but would I think that as a parent in 1965? I don’t know) as the death of Grandpa Gene, also known as the only adult in Sally’s life who ever really “got” her. He teaches her to drive (bad judgment, sure, but from Sally’s perspective? Hello, awesome!); he doesn’t punish her for stealing his $5.00, but he knows and she knows he knows; he tells her she’s smart and can do anything she puts her mind to. His death didn’t just take Sally’s grandpa away, it took away her only ALLY, and a mere six months later her mother leaves to get a Reno divorce, and then immediately after that she marries another man. And now, Sally only sees her father every (other?) weekend and even then her dad leaves her to go be with another woman.

Sally: What’s her name?
Don: Bethany.
Sally: I don’t like that.
Me: Me either!

A couple random observations before I get to the Honda thing:

* Had I been Sally’s age in 1965, I probably would’ve been into David McCallum too.

* Mrs. Blankenship is a travesty, and it’s already not funny. Please don’t let this devolve into some sort of cliche sitcom thing.

* Funniest exchange on the show came early, with Roger’s laxative jokes and Bert’s exasperated, “We’ve had that client for 18 years, Roger.” Subtext: We’ve heard them all before. Multiple times. (True, since Sal and Paul have a go early in Season 1!)

* Smitty!

As for the SCDP/Honda plot:

1. I like it when Don gets all schemey. It felt like the end of season 3 when they create SCDP in the first place, with the 60s caper music and everyone playing a part. Interesting that Don turns to an extremely risky scheme in light of his disapproval of Peggy and Pete’s ham fight stunt. I realize that it’s a little apples vs. oranges, but still. (I was greatly amused by Peggy riding around on the motorcycle on the empty set.)

2. The scenes with Roger were super-charged and fantastic. It’s already been established, as far back as the first season, that Roger dismisses anyone who didn’t serve in WWII, including other army vets who served in Korea (like Don), but I still wasn’t expecting the sheer rage at the idea of possibly doing business with Honda.

2a. Pete’s speech, accusing Roger of wanting to keep SCDP dependent on Lucky Strike, was amazing. And how weird was it to see Don side with Pete there, given all their history? Interesting alliance shifts.

2b. Joan and Roger’s quieter scene was lovely. She is as calming an influence on him as Henry seems to be with Betty. Their scenes together don’t have quite the same punch for me as Peggy/Pete scenes, but these are also two people with a great deal of history, and I love watching them together.

3. HOWEVER. The Honda executives leering at Joan and the question, “How does she not fall over?” is a horrible, horrible misstep. It was beyond stupid. What purpose does that scene even serve? It’s not funny, it objectifies Joan in a way that not even Paul Kinsey ever managed to do, and it makes the Japanese businessmen look like idiots. Honestly, it’s the main reason this episode doesn’t sit right with me. (And the exchange between Joan: “Not very subtle, are they?” and the translator’s response, “No, they are not,” is all too easily interpreted as being about Joan’s breasts, not the Honda execs. This scene was a big heaping pile of crap.)

4. On a more positive note, I did enjoy the conversation between Don and Faye at the end, even though once again it puts the “theme” of the episode in Faye’s mouth, that people talk about stuff because it makes them feel better. And then Don starts opening up to Faye, and even though he’s drinking it doesn’t feel like he’s boozing. If the writers are setting the two of them up for a romantic relationship, I like the way they’re doing so.

Related posts:

1. Mad Men: I don’t hate Christmas, I just hate THIS Christmas
2. Mad Men: The Beauty Myth
3. Put Out or Get Out (aka MOAR MAD MEN)

Of the conspiracy story, we do learn a few things, mostly surrounding the seven names that Will had asked his CIA friend Daniel to look up:

1. Two more names: Donald Bloom and C.M. Haddix, the latter of which could be a pseudonym, since he writes Tom Clancy-like mass market spy novels (I thought that was funny).
2. All of the people on the list were CIA, and had worked in the Middle East division in the 1980s.
3. One name was untraceable. Curious that this bit of information comes on the heels of Will meeting an old friend of Spangler who never uses his real name.
4. Three are dead — one of cancer, two in the line of duty (if I’m interpreting “stars on the wall at Langley” correctly, and I think I am).
5. Miles calls Bloom a slippery character, gives Will a copy of Bloom’s driver’s license (his address is in Arlington, VA — the things you notice in HD!) and says he flew into JFK a couple days ago.

Meanwhile, Katherine Rhumor is moping around her husband’s secret townhouse when the box of his belongings arrives, and underneath his bloody bathrobe she finds his cell phone, which still has two voice mail messages he never listened to. One is from her; the other from James Wheeler: “If you keep this up, you know what’s going to happen.”

THEN Katherine finds a menu for a nearby Chinese restaurant, visits it, and finds out that an order was delivered to the townhouse less than a month ago and paid for by James Wheeler. Dun dun DUNNNNN! Now she knows James lied to her when he said he didn’t know about the townhouse.

All this was interesting and forward moving, yes, but the real meat of the show was with Will’s team, tasked with assessing the risks in taking out an al-Qaeda leader. What I loved about this was how their intel-gathering and analysis was interspersed with Will’s trip to D.C. with Spangler to lobby for NSC support. I will admit that my comprehension of where API stands in relation to the CIA, et al. is foggy — I believe API is an independent intelligence agency, and what Spangler was lobbying for wasn’t government funding but assurances that they could continue to work outside the purview of Congress, that they wouldn’t be subject to the same oversight as the CIA would be. I think?

But my point here is that the thrust of Spangler’s argument was that API represents total objectivity — they simply analyze the data without feeling the pressures of an established relationship — they’re not going to write an assessment based on what they think the NSC wants to hear. (BTW, Spangler’s tie speech was inspired. Loved it. “We have no sartorial history” is a great line.) But it’s all the more compelling because Will’s team is actively demonstrating that such objectivity weighs heavily on the analysts responsible for interpreting intel in terms of whether one life is worth risking 300 other lives, especially children’s lives. It’s a moral question, but morals can’t enter into their assessment. I was pleased and fascinated by this philosophical turn.

Other observations:

* What was the deal with Will and his flirty/not-flirty lady neighbor? Are we supposed to think that someone else is spying on him, or are we supposed to think that HE thinks someone else is spying on him?

* OF COURSE Will drinks French press coffee. (Don’t ask me to explain that. But you know what I mean, right?)

* I’m so conditioned now to seek out clues in everything that I couldn’t help notice the flower stand behind Will at Grand Central Station called “DAHLIA.” Common crossword puzzle answer; the dahlia is Mexico’s national flower. What does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? (Minor potential quibble: that IS Grand Central, isn’t it? But I don’t think the Acela train to DC goes through there.)

* I liked that the briefcase subplot worked on a couple levels. Outside the conspiracy angle, it’s a nice mentoring moment, Spangler advising Will to get a more professional-looking briefcase, one that doesn’t advertise itself as trendy or expensive or one that has spring-lock clasps — Spangler is a man who knows his briefcases. And the follow-through when Spangler gives Will a briefcase that looks identical to Spangler’s own briefcase — again, nice mentoring moment, a generous gift to one’s protege.

Except you just KNOW that briefcase is bugged or has some sort of GPS chip in it.

Or maybe not. Sometimes a briefcase is just a briefcase. And darn it, I’m starting to rather like Truxton Spangler.

Related posts:

1. Rubicon: From Letters to Numbers
2. Rubicon: Security Lockdown
3. Rubicon: The Dots and the Lines

The focus group for Ponds, for example, begs to be compared to the one for Belle Jolie lipstick (“Babylon,” the 6th episode of Season 1). It’s there that Peggy first distinguishes herself, calling the wastebasket full of Kleenex blotters a “basket of kisses,” where the junior executives ogle and judge the secretaries from behind the two-way mirror, where the secretaries themselves squeal with joy at the thought of trying new lipsticks, and where Alison (yes, Alison) is perplexed by the survey questions put to her by the severe woman in charge of research.

The Ponds group turns into a group therapy session. While they are still being observed by men (and Peggy), there’s no leering, no voyeuristic delight taken in watching them. This is all business. And there’s no joy here at all. The women seem extremely reluctant to talk about their beauty regimen at first, as though they’re not supposed to have one — and really, almost all advertising for beauty products even today sends the message that women aren’t supposed to look as though they WORK at their appearance. (“Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline,” anyone?) And just when it seems as though they’re ready to start spilling and sharing their secrets, the meeting turns to despair. It ultimately doesn’t matter what we do to make ourselves beautiful, these women say — it’s neither appreciated nor noticed. And both Freddy and Faye misinterpret this outpouring of frustration as indicative of these women’s desire for marriage. While it may be true that they do want to get married, and it may be true that a woman’s worth on the marriage market is by and large her appearance, the callous way this vulnerability is parleyed into an advertising pitch is as stark as Pete’s father-in-law’s valuing a baby girl at half what a baby boy would be worth. (You think of your own daughter like that, Tom?)

But Alison sees things differently, and it’s clear that she’s still feeling Don’s rejection, and she runs out of the room crying after remarking, “It’s worse when they DO notice.” And in the subsequent scene between Alison and Peggy, it felt as though Peggy were channeling Joan in telling Alison to get over it. And I get where Peggy’s indignation comes from, as I’m sure she’s dealt with other people/co-workers believing that she was sleeping with Don at one point, and her harshness is completely in character — Peggy has never been all that sensitive to the needs or feelings of others.

And really, I think Alison was over it, for the most part, and what upset her wasn’t that she and Don were never going to turn their one night stand into an affair, but that he refused to explicitly recognize what happened between them and how it necessarily affected their working relationship. I mean, even Pete had the decency to talk to Peggy as soon as he got back from his honeymoon, to tell her that he was married now and nothing more could happen between them. (Of course, Pete goes back on this and treats Peggy pretty horribly afterward, but still.) Alison feels used (and she was used) and is looking for some sort of indication from Don that he SEES her. But when he responds to her request (well, more of a demand) for a letter of recommendation with “Put whatever you want into a letter and I’ll sign it” — I think this was and may still be fairly standard practice, to sign whatever letter an employee writes for him/herself — but of course to Alison it comes across as Don being unwilling or unable to say ANYTHING about her, to NOTICE her at all. And that’s sad. More sad than Don being unable or unwilling to describe what exactly his life is like right now — and I’m going with unwilling. Though his attempt at an apology letter to Alison was a step in the right direction, I think. I hope.

Joan, at least, seems to have Alison’s back in some way — putting Bert Cooper’s old secretary Mrs. Blankenship on Don’s desk is meant to be seen as a sort of punishment. Am I alone in hearing “Mrs. Blankenship” and immediately thinking “Mrs. Landingham“? Unfortunately it seems as though the former isn’t as competent as the latter, although “Dr. Miller is here to see you. It’s a SHE” was hysterical.

So Trudy is pregnant. Excellent. Interesting that this development had less to do with Pete and Trudy than it did Pete and Peggy. The scenes between those two always kill me, and last night’s episode was no exception. Peggy standing in the doorway to Pete’s office, offering congratulations, the long pause between them, and the lingering look between them at the end of the episode, with the closed glass door of the office separating them, Pete standing with the older businessmen and Peggy going off to lunch with the Youth Culture, that almost imperceptible nod and smile Pete gives Peggy and her smile in response — I love these two, and I love that they’ve managed to get to a place where they will never be romantically entangled again but will always be connected to each other and have that level of unspoken understanding (I also LOVED that they both deal with stress by banging their heads against something, be it column or desk [in fact loved the way Slattery directed so much action around the column in Pete's office]) — it’s bittersweet, and also strangely comforting.

Peggy had a number of outstanding moments in this episode. From peeping over the wall between her office and Don’s to telling new friend Joyce that her boyfriend may not own her vagina “but he rents it,” her non-reaction reaction to Joyce’s come-on, her telling the Warhol knock-offs that she’s Catholic, there was a lot to like about Peggy here. Almost enough to forgive her cruelty to Alison.

Finally, I was wondering when we’d see Ken Cosgrove again (Aaron Staton’s name has been in the main credit sequence all season), and it was clear to me at the lunch he has with Pete and Harry that Ken’s looking for a way in at SCDP. Or maybe he’s just looking wistfully in the windows of the place that rejected him (one of the many rejections touched upon in this episode). It always seemed as though Roger and Don went to Pete in the first place for the same reason Bert Cooper talks Don out of firing Pete way back in the early part of Season 1: because Pete’s family name is their ticket to the bigger clients. And while Ken Cosgrove may have been the better employee (Lane explains choosing him over Pete as Head of Accounts because Ken makes clients feel as though they haven’t any needs), Pete definitely comes into his own in this episode, by leveraging SCDP’s rejection of Clearasil into landing all the rest of the Vicks Empire. That was a great scene, where Pete tells his father-in-law that he wants all that business. Tom has always used the Clearasil business as a dangling carrot to get Pete to toe the family line, and now that Trudy is pregnant, Tom has nothing more to demand, really. Now Pete has the power. And he uses it. Tom calls Pete a “son of a bitch” and Pete shrugs it off, as if to say, “Yeah. So what?”

Besides, after Tom promised $1,000 if Trudy has a boy and $500 if it’s a girl, I wanted him to go down hard. Asshat.

Random observations:

* Don’s “Oh my God, there’s a FIRE” ploy to get off the phone with Lee Garner, Jr. was funny. That conversation was also historically accurate — Congress passed new restrictions on cigarette advertising in 1965, though I don’t know whether it was early ’65. In five more years, cigarettes won’t be allowed to be advertised on TV.

* Harry kills me with the Yiddish, this week muttering something about the “gonifs at CBS” (Gonif = crook).

* Freddy’s munching on Wise potato chips during the focus group. So long, Utz.

* So Joan’s office doubles as the observation room for focus group meetings. No wonder she looked put out as she gathered the women around the conference table.

* Speaking of, I totally missed the fact that SCDP has a conference table now, and actually did so by the second episode. I was sort of hoping they’d have the open discussion thing going for a little longer.

* It’s a small moment, I think, at the loft party, but I really liked it when Peggy comments that she likes the experimental film they’re watching because it’s rhythmic. It’s like, she may work in advertising and may be a little uptight and everything, but she sees things that go unnoticed by other people.

* David Kellogg — in joke?

* Thematic line of the episode: “You can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved.”

* Fantastic line of the episode (aside from “No, but he’s renting it”): “Another Campbell. That’s just what the world needs.”

* Fantastic moment of the episode: “Did you get pears? Did you get pears? Did you get pears?” “We’ll discuss it inside.” — You think Don plays it close to the vest? This woman doesn’t even share PRODUCE information outside her apartment. Actually, I’m not quite sure what to make of that ending. I get it sort of abstractly, but am having a hard time putting it into words. Something about marriage and growing old together and Don looks sober for once and the addition of this elderly couple means the apartment building isn’t just inhabited by lonely single people . . . something.

Related posts:

1. Mad Men: Torn Between Two Drunkards
2. Put Out or Get Out (aka MOAR MAD MEN)
3. Mad Men: I don’t hate Christmas, I just hate THIS Christmas

No?

Well, never mind, then. Only I was going to say that at one point in this week’s episode of Rubicon, it felt like Will was in a room escape game: dismantling the motorcycle David left him (first episode), finding the photograph of David and David’s son Evan (who wants the bike, swearing that David wanted him to have it), treating the photograph as a clue and using it to deduce that the packing tape stitching together the bike seat was more than just packing tape, finding the number code, and then ripping the seat apart to find the gun.

[The link to room escape games, by the way, leads to a casual game site that picks out some of the best games out there -- and usually provides a walkthrough to consult when you get stuck. I recommend anything by Mateusz Skutnik: his Great Kitchen Escape was the first room escape game I ever played, and his Submachine series is simply the best.]

But back to Rubicon. It’s still a little too early to comment on the central mystery, and frankly this episode doesn’t really provide any forward motion on that front anyway. We get Ed Bancroft and Will Travers agreeing that David was probably murdered and probably saw it coming and that’s why he left all these clues for Will; we get the baseball number codes and then the names of three people out of seven total that were named by the code, and hopefully they’ll come into play soon. Those names, for future reference: Jeffery Garcia, Alfred Bermudez, Randy Hobbs.

At the beginning of the episode, Will’s being followed by someone, and someone other than the two guys who were watching him in the last episode. Will’s told by Ingram that he was being watched as part of his vetting process, but I think that’s BS, especially as he neglected to tell Will that his stalker was FBI (which we find out via the other two guys). I think Ingram wants Will watched for the same reason as the first two guys — to find out how much Will knows and how close he gets to uncovering whatever conspiracy this is.

We also get a tiny glimpse into the private lives of two other characters: it turns out that Miles is having some family issues — which perhaps explains his behavior in the last episode. Maggie said that he was upset about something and was transferring that to the situation in Nigeria; Miles dodges Will’s questions about his family. From the phone call between Miles and his (ex?) wife Maureen, it sounds as though they’re separated, on the way to divorce. And the father of Maggie’s child shows up unexpectedly, and she seems both afraid of him and willing to work out some sort of deal so that their kid can have a “normal life,” but it’s not clear at all what happened between them (is he an ex-con? Was he abusive? Absentee?) and honestly? I don’t really care all that much. I don’t find her character particularly compelling.

Miles raises an interesting question: why is their group studying Yuri Popovich and George Boeck, when they’re the Middle East team? Why isn’t another team investigating Boeck and the other mystery guy meeting with Popovich? It explains Grant’s rather insubordinate “Why?” from last week, when Will handed down the assignment. And it is curious: will it turn out to be connected to Middle East politics, or is it a red herring thrown by this shadowy conspiracy group for the purpose of distracting Will and Will’s team?

There wasn’t much on the Katherine Rhumor front. She goes to dinner with Tom’s friend James, who swears he knew nothing about the townhouse Tom left to Katherine, but then we see him go into the townhouse and grab a photograph of a group of young boys — assumedly Tom and James are among them. I’ll go further and suggest that this photograph is of all of the older men who gather together at the end of the first episode, and we’re dealing with some sort of Skull and Bones/Secret History type thing. Maybe?

One final question: I wonder, as a special Easter egg for viewers, whether each episode’s title is a sort of clue. First episode is “Gone in the Teeth,” second is “The First Day of School,” and this episode is “Keep the Ends Out.” They’re similar to both crossword puzzle clues and acrostic puzzle clues, and don’t really have much to do directly with what happens in each episode (except for “The First Day of School,” which is about Will’s first day as David’s successor). I COULD be overthinking this, as I am wont to do. And I COULD be giving the show too much credit. But it’s a smart show already and I wouldn’t put it past a smart show about word puzzles to do something fun with the episode titles. Something to play with, anyway. Who wants to help?

Related posts:

1. Rubicon: The Next Great TV Show?
2. Rubicon: Security Lockdown
3. Rubicon: Irreversible Decisions

When I saw the episode title I wasn’t sure whether it would be a Christian reference, an indication that after all the bad news we’ve seen in the first two episodes there would FINALLY be some good news, or, that since good news always seems to go hand in hand with bad news, that we’d be treated to even more. Turns out it’s all three, although there is very little good news in this episode.

In fact, WAS there any good news on last night’s episode? Other than Lane discovering that even though Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce suffered a few setbacks, they had a magnificent first year? (That IS good news, after all. A good way to ring in 1965.)

And yet I think it’s ultimately going to find its way into my top five favorite episodes; solidly plotted and well paced, full of character development, achieving the right sort of balance between heavy sorrowfulness and levity. And it focused on the two characters I wanted to see more of from the beginning of the season: Joan and Lane.

I LOVED their scenes together. Joan’s seductive fried chicken offer and Lane’s rather classic-Hugh-Grant-esque replies were hilarious:

Joan: …fried chicken. Interested?
Lane: [slightly bumbly] I am!
Joan: Breast or thigh?
Lane: [more bumbly] One of each?
Joan’s face: Uh-huh. KNEW IT.

And I loved Lane’s stress-enhanced blow-up at Joan after realizing that she was just bribing him for vacation time: “I understand that all men are dizzy and powerless to refuse you, but consider me the incorruptible exception. Fried chicken, indeed.”

But then this leads to a huge WHOOPS — what we find out later is that Lane is currently embroiled in a major argument with his wife, who we know from the previous season vigorously HATES New York and has taken their child back to London to spend the rest of the holidays. Lane tries to send apology roses to both his wife and to Joan, and actually does compose appropriate notes to each of them, but the deliveries are bungled and Joan receives the roses intended for Mrs. Pryce (I sincerely hope that Joan wasn’t supposed to get red roses, but an arrangement appropriate for a work relationship). The scene that follows, with both Joan and Lane giving Lane’s secretary (sorry, ex-secretary) a thorough and harsh dressing-down (in which Joan gets mad props for using “egregious,” one of my favorite words), is beautifully executed. I remember thinking that Joan and Don together (not romantically, necessarily) would be a force to be reckoned with, and now I think the same of Joan and Lane (not romantically, necessarily).

Which means that Mrs. Pryce received flowers with a note that simply read, “Joan, forgive me,” and (we assume) jumps to the natural conclusion that Lane is cheating on her (how AMERICAN) and tells him she’s not coming back to New York. “Ever?” is the hanging question, as Lane is now in matrimonial limbo and turns to Don for insight and advice. And seriously, if I have to add “Oh, Lane” to my repertoire which already includes several variations on “Oh, Don,” “Oh, Roger,” and “Oh, Peggy,” I’m going to run out of room for anything else.

But I get it. I get why Lane would turn to Don, partly because all the married men think Don has THE LIFE, and in part because he’ll need a Sherpa if his marriage is truly ending. And I thoroughly enjoyed watching their scenes together, more than I enjoyed watching Lane and Joan, and possibly — possibly — more than I’ve enjoyed watching Don and Roger. They play off each other beautifully, though arguably both Jon Hamm and Jared Harris play off everyone else equally as beautifully. Every bit of dialogue between them was priceless. I laughed at the two of them yelling at each other across the office (Lane + Don = my grandparents. They’d hold entire conversations at the top of their lungs from different rooms of the house); laughed when Lane brought the bottle of MacCutcheon (prove to me it wasn’t) with him in answering Don’s call; laughed at the tiny throwaway exchange when Don’s pouring more MacCutcheon on the floor than in the flask and apologizes by way of quoting Anna: “We’ll have to smoke the dress,” and Lane responds, “I don’t know what that means”;
and I don’t think I’ve laughed harder at anything on this show than at the two of them watching the Gamera movie (full disclosure: didn’t realize it was Gamera, shameful when you consider how much MST3K I’ve watched in my lifetime. Appropriately, it was TV’s Frank who pointed out that it was, indeed, Gamera). That they’re at the Gamera movie after Umbrellas of Cherbourg is floated as an option made me roar with laughter in the first place, and I cannot say enough about Jared Harris’ delivery on “This movie’s very good!” All of it. Loved it. Honestly, it was such a nice distraction from all the depressing things that happen on the show.

Most depressing: Anna Draper has cancer. And I honestly don’t know — hopefully one of you does — whether it was common or at least not unheard of in 1964 for doctors to not disclose a patient’s condition to that patient. I can understand it if the patient were a minor, but I think it’s unconscionable for Anna’s sister to withhold the information from her. She’s not an idiot, and she’s certainly capable of dealing with the news — nothing suggests otherwise.

The minute Harry said he knew Don had a layover in LA I hoped that Don would be going to visit Anna. And the shot of Don driving down the PCH in a red convertible had me thinking, “Finally, he looks relaxed.” And yes, he skeeved me out by putting the moves on Anna’s niece Stephanie, particularly as earlier he’d told her that he remembered her as a child (like, Sally’s age now), but for the most part he’s a completely different person with Anna, in California. And this element of the episode had me choked up more than once — when Don carries Anna to bed was one such moment; when she tells him, “I know everything about you, and I still love you,” was another. Anna is Don’s “Shelter From the Storm,” and for that to be taken away from him . . . Don signing the wall “Dick + Anna 1964″ just killed me, after all that.

Bob Dylan lyrics

Bob Dylan Shelter From The Storm 1976 Video – Bob Dylan Music Videos

I feel as though this post has shortchanged Joan, but her part of this episode answered a number of questions: While I’m still not clear on what her job title and responsibilities are (if she has someone to clear up messes and file paperwork, why is she the one picking pencils out of the ceiling? [even though, I have to say: hee!]), Greg is still in New York, as far as I know he hasn’t started basic training (which would be in San Antonio, right?), and doesn’t even know when it will start, nor does he know whether he’ll be sent to Vietnam (but of course he will be). All this makes it difficult for them to plan for a family, and clearly Joan is upset by this much uncertainty — interesting that both Joan and Lane are feeling domestic pressures which find their outlets at the office. I wonder whether Joan would’ve fired Lane’s secretary for the flower mixup had her private life been running smoothly (especially since Lois, the secretary who RAN OVER SOMEONE’S FOOT, somehow managed to keep her job — that has ALWAYS bothered me).

I thought the scene between Joan and Greg on New Year’s Eve was great. Loved that Joan decides that they’ll simply ring in the new year on Hawaii time, and has provided a themed table for them. And when she slices open her finger, I thought it was interesting that she was so reluctant to have Greg stitch it up. As though she didn’t trust him, the former surgeon with no brains in his fingers. When she breaks down and starts crying, it’s clear that everything’s hitting her at once; this is her breaking point. And I’ll be damned if Greg’s “I can’t fix everything, but I can fix this,” didn’t garner an “awww” from me. Dammit, Greg. That was absolutely the right thing to say and now I hate you just a little less.

Other stuff:

* Very little Peggy in this episode, which is OK every once in a while I suppose, but what we did see of her showed that even though she’s got more professional confidence, she’s still totally awkward and tense around Joan.

* There was a nice callback to last week’s episode when Don asked Lane whether flying to London to reconcile with his wife is “what you want, or what people expect of you.”

* I chuckled when the nightclub singer launched into “House of the Rising Sun” and Don’s all “We’re outta here.” More than I chuckled at the entire opening comedic act, but I think his unfunniness was intentional. I grudgingly like that Don’s “special lady friend” is the prostitute from the first episode, and that they seem to have a — what’s the word, friendly? sort of respectful? — relationship that goes beyond the light S&M he pays for.

* I’d rather not mention Lane’s steak-on-the-crotch shenanigans; however: props to the sound editors who cut in the nightclub applause a bit early so that it almost seems like the other restaurant patrons are applauding Lane’s vulgarity. (Oh, Lane.)

Related posts:

1. Mad Men: The Beauty Myth
2. Mad Men: Torn Between Two Drunkards
3. Mad Men: Of Hair and Sex

Here’s why it appeals to me:

1. Paper is king. People read on this show. They do the crossword puzzle. The show is set at some sort of intelligence agency (but not the CIA), and people are given stacks upon stacks of documents and photos to analyze. I’ve seen two people watch TV, but I have yet to see someone type furiously on a computer keyboard while his/her monitor displays some sort of techo-dazzle that only exists on TV.

In fact, the crossword puzzle is a key plot element. The first episode begins with a wealthy man (if you’re like me, you exclaimed, “Hey, it’s Quentin Travers!” when you saw him) committing suicide after seeing a four-leaf clover on his morning paper. (See? Reading!) Then the credits roll. The next scene introduces Will Travers, Rubicon‘s main character, solving a particularly tricky crossword puzzle clue: “What lucky lepidoptera larvae eat.” The answer is “four-leaf clovers” — COINCIDENCE? Most likely not, and I’m sure the rest of this season is going to uncover the connection between the two.

What I didn’t quite buy is that Will knows the Latin for four-leaf clover, the correct answer to the puzzle, off the top of his head. Then again, I just met the guy. Maybe this is a defining character trait — he’s bookish, possibly savantish. Probably why his shirt is always untucked.

But despite that, I love that paper and books and puzzles are central to the show. I’ve always loved word puzzles. I don’t even mind the amount of time the show spent showing us Will working through a book-related cypher.

2. The show is intricately written — it’s only after rewatching the pilot after watching the second episode that I realized how intricate. David — the super-superstitious team leader killed in a train accident in the pilot episode, who also happens to be Will’s father-in-law — gives Will a book early on in the first episode, and it’s this book that Will uses to work through the aforementioned cypher in episode two. When Will brings David the information about the same crossword puzzle clues running simultaneously in several different international newspapers, David brings it to his superior, saying “I’ve never seen anything like this.” NOT TRUE, we learn in the second episode — he actually CREATED the first crossword puzzle cypher back in 1983.

Did David know about the train crash? Did he know, as not-Quentin Travers seemed to know, that his time was up, and he’s setting all the puzzle pieces in play for Will to pick up?

3. For that matter, I love the overall old-school espionage feel that the show has. I love that it’s quiet. It heightens the suspense and my suspicion that the character Arliss Howard plays is up to no good. (How can he be, when he’s clearly manipulating Maggie [Will's assistant] into spying on Will’s team?)

4. I love Miranda Richardson. As the widow of the wealthy guy (Tom Rhumor, I looked it up. Rhumor? Really? Subtle. Also subtle: opening the show with kids playing hide and seek. But I’ll let that pass — it made me chuckle) she’s starting to learn about her late husband’s secret life (an AMC show specialty, apparently) and I’m looking forward to further discoveries and how her path will cross with Will’s — because surely it does.

5. I’m a sucker for anything set in New York, really.

So I’m pretty hooked and will probably pick up a season pass on iTunes to keep up with the show. I do like this concept of ala carte television. Why spend $120 a month to watch two or three shows when I can pay $56? I wonder how soon cable packages will start including the ala carte options, so I can pick and choose which channels I want. I’d restart my cable subscription if I could just have, say, AMC and BBCA and maybe one or two others, and leave off the rest.

Did you watch Rubicon? What did you think? Worth watching more?

Related posts:

1. Rubicon: From Letters to Numbers
2. Rubicon: Security Lockdown
3. Rubicon: The Dots and the Lines

Anyway. Enjoy.

It would seem as though Don Draper’s dalliance with a prostitute in last week’s episode, as out of character as it felt for him (or rather as an indication of how low the man has sunk over the past 11 months), was a sign of things to come in this episode. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is forced to throw a Christmas party that they can’t afford to placate Lee Garner, Jr., whose business represents over half of their cash flow. Don has sex with his secretary and then dismisses her with $100.

Up until last season, Allison was one of many Sterling Cooper secretaries who occasionally got a line or was part of the background in a scene — she’s also the secretary that Ken Cosgrove tackles so he can look at her underwear in “Nixon vs. Kennedy” (a real life office game called “Scuttle”) — but she eventually becomes Don’s secretary; in fact, the secretary he’s always wanted, someone who wanted that job and nothing more. Peggy had higher aspirations, Lois was a disaster, Jane was only interested in finding a man. Allison is efficient, intuitive, smart, she understands Don’s needs and knows how to meet them. I was pleased last week to see that she came with him to SCDP, where, it would seem she has slightly more access to the cypher that is Don Draper. She reads Sally’s Santa letter to Don, visibly moved by the ending (“I want you to be here, but I know that you can’t be”), and this implies a touch of the personal that enhances their professional relationship.

But then Don crosses the line and drunkenly puts the moves on Allison, and you can see her thought process in initially hesitating — is this a good idea, he’s my boss, will he fire me if I refuse him, is this just going to be one of those things — and I think you can also see pity in her face. The morning after I can’t tell whether she thinks something has started between them — her apparent eagerness to close the door to his office, her guarded hello — or whether she’s willing and ready to chalk this up to a drunken hookup that won’t happen again. It’s clear that she’s waiting for him to define what happened, but I don’t think she’s ready for him to completely bungle the morning after talk — all he needed to say was “I let things get out of hand” or something similar but he’s not at all capable of owning responsibility for what happened — and then hand her the bonus he’d mentioned earlier. Given what transpired between them, he might as well have left the money on the counter as he did with the prostitute last week. (To add insult to injury, it’s not even a check, but two $50 bills.)

I’m sure many companies this year had holiday parties similar to what was originally planned at SCDP — “a glass of gin and a box of Velveeta” — a measure of tightening their budget and limiting indulgences. And that all gets tossed aside after Lee Garner, Jr., demands to be invited to the party. SCDP is now put in a similar situation to Allison — Lucky Strike is essentially their boss, and if they don’t put out they’ll lose him as a client. Is all business prostitution? Furthermore, I think Lee Garner, Jr., knows exactly how much power he holds over the company, and he clearly relishes abusing that power. We saw that before, last season, when he came on to Sal and then demanded Sal be fired after Sal did not return his advances. His bullying Roger into putting on the Santa suit and having everyone sit on his lap had sexual undertones for me because of that history. For a man like Lee Garner, Jr., all power is sexual. Even though the Christmas party spectacle is entirely in keeping with SCDP’s mission of keeping up the appearance of being more successful than they really are, it was still too sad to watch the SCDP employees pretend to have fun, given how raucous and bacchanialian they’ve been in the past (again, “Nixon vs. Kennedy” provides clear contrast). As though they’re simply going through the motions. Don and Roger’s German-accented quips the next day reaffirm how it felt: as though SCDP is an occupied country, lorded over by a tobacco dictator.

As timely and appropriate as it may be for Christmas 1964, I thought the discussion of Medicare, Civil Rights and socialism was a bit forced, though I did think it was interesting that Bert Cooper and Dr. Atherton (head of that consumer research firm working for SCDP — and I thought it was a nice bit of consistency that he’s mentioned in the previous episode as the guy who thought the lack of conference table was deliberate) believe that these acts create a slippery slope that will lead directly to banning personal property, and interesting that Atherton, leader of this innovative method of marketing, believes that consumers are children who need to be steered clear of socialist tendencies — through advertising, of course! — and is therefore as out of touch and unprepared for the country’s evolution as the senior members of SCDP. Never mind how similar their tirade against social change sounds similar to today’s anti-government rants — as misinformed and misdirected then as now.

It was funny to me, then, that within this show it was this group, Dr. Faye Miller in particular, who came up with the “carefree gal in white pants” as the symbol for feminine hygiene products — Peggy’s small head shake at that clearly means “you have no idea what young women want or who they even are” — even though this is the image that has persisted in advertising tampons and pads for decades. I think it all boils down to Miller’s axiom: “what I want vs. what’s expected of me.” The way such advertising works on us is not that we want to BE that carefree gal, it’s that our minds readily process her as a symbol rather than an ideal, and this is why it’s persisted for so long — moreover, it’s a symbol less about confidence and independence and more about concealment and hiding away, something everyone at SCDP knows on a deeply personal level. In turn, this helps explain why Freddy’s approach to the Ponds campaign is hopelessly out of date — he’s looking at the real, rather than the symbolic.

Still, I remember the show being a little more subtle about bringing history in — Carla listening to the news about the four girls killed in Birmingham, Sally’s interest in Medgar Evers’ death mentioned only in passing, or having characters directly involved in major events (Paul Kinsey going down to Mississippi, for example). I hope that future episodes do a little more than simply having a couple characters mutter something about Civil Rights.

Related posts:

1. Mad Men: I don’t hate Christmas, I just hate THIS Christmas
2. Mad Men: The Beauty Myth
3. Mad Men: Bad News Always Follows Good