….and we’re back!
And Mad Men’s back! While the overt tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis has effectively dissipated, the offices of Sterling Cooper still hum with an undercurrent of dread. The British buyout has led to a series of redundancies, giving the episode a strangely topical feel. We follow the tribulations of Pete Campbell as he is jointly promoted with Ken Cosgrove to Head of Accounts. Pete has always been one of those characters that vacillates between earning the audience’s sympathy or its contempt. Given the fact that he seems to have dealt well with the bombshell that Peggy dropped on him at the end of the last season, it would seem that perhaps we’re being invited to actually commiserate with his troubles. But any favour he may have curried is squandered in his petulant behaviour. He pouts, he sulks, he whines and generally behaves like a pomaded baby in a Brooks Brothers suit. In another life, he would have made for the perfect contestant on The Apprentice.
But, because this is Mad Men, the real drama always follows Don Draper, who seems to be developing borderline mystical powers. Not only is he able to sleep with anyone in possession of two XX chromosomes, but he is now able to project his consciousness into the past, able to eavesdrop on events that took place before he was even born. It does make me wonder how he is able to picture, with such vivid accuracy, the sad circumstances of his conception. One wonders whether the Whitmans just sat him down on their laps when he came of age and said, “Y’see, Dick, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they will procure the services of a stern-faced matriarch, who will then arrange for a baby to be taken from a no-account, gutter-mouthed prostitute who's not long for this world! Oh, and by the way, Dick, your name isn’t actually short for Richard.” Of course, this preternatural ability is made all the more jarring and significant when he finds himself unable to tell Sally the circumstances of her birth.
Of course, from the moment that the air stewardess mistakes Don for ‘Mr Hofstadt’ you know that she’ll end up sleeping with him. This in itself is not all that surprising. But, what is deeply impressive is the Bell Boy’s incredible gaydar. The Bell Boy is able to pick up, within seconds, what nobody in Sterling Cooper has been able to pick up on in all the years they’ve worked with him. Who would have thought that
- So, is Don Draper’s real full name actually Dick Hogfat Whitman?
- Hokusai’s “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” is now hanging up in Burt Cooper’s office, taking pride of place over a Rothko. and I'd rather have the picture that launched a thousand tentacle porn sites than a work of abstract expressionism anyday.
- “You’re the dying Empire! We’re the future!” So farewell then Bert Peterson. We hardly knew ye. Other than a reference in “The New Girl”, in which we learn from Pete that Duck called him a “mongoloid”. Still, it was a pretty decent exit.
- New character: John “Moneypenny” Hooker, male secretary and complete and utter toad. At first I thought that Pete Campbell had adopted an English accent in order to ingratiate himself further with his new British Masters.
- “I’ve been married a long time. You get plenty of chances.”
- The many hats of Trudy Campbell. Number 1 in an ongoing series. This week: The Kid N’ Play ‘House Party’ Hat.
- Harry Crane has suddenly come back as a Master of the Dark Arts, having a a suddenly gravitas and authority, as opposed to the bumbling, desperate man who fretted over a wrongly opened envelope in the last season.
- Roger Sterling is to Kramer as Don Draper is to Seinfeld. Discuss.
"Love Among The Ruins"
Oh, Kinsey. Why do I love this odious character so? His gauche liberalism. His transparent hypocrisy. His self-satisfied sense of superiority. All of these should make him perhaps the most hated character on the show. And yet, he is also one of the most consistently amusing characters. The look on his face as he delivers his line, “It will make them trust me more when I help them out”, combined with the look of withering contempt from Pete Campbell, (from Pete motherfucking Campbell!) just cement him in my affections as a lovably loathsome little shit.
As Kinsey wrestles (briefly) with his objections to the building of Madison Square Garden, Peggy is more forthright in her own objections to Pepsi’s insistence on ripping-off, wholesale, Ann Margaret’s performance of “Bye-Bye Birdie.” Elisabeth Moss is at her brittle best, as she tries (and fails) to convince others of the ads inherent “phoniness”, even as she tries to figure out what it is about Ann Margaret’s vivacious and flirtatious purity which accounts for her appeal to both men and women. Unlike most of the other female characters in Mad Men, when Peggy is confronted with something which tests her concept of femininity, rather than submit unwillingly to it, she goes off and re-writes her own rules. In this case, it means tracking down a genially chumpish, faux college boy for a one night stand. Well, it's much more healthy than shooting your neighbour's pigeons.
Don and Betty are possibly at their least pleasant throughout this episode. When Betty isn’t sucking down those cigarettes (although it's refreshing to see a pregnant woman depicted smoking with a shrug) she’s using Don to strong-arm William. And when Don isn’t forcibly ejecting the in-laws from chez Draper, he’s silently eyeing up his daughter’s teacher and planning his next inevitable infidelity. There’s still a tiny measure of satisfaction to be had as both Don and Betty realise what they’ve set themselves up for when they catch Gene pouring away their bottles of wine, convinced he’s still in the prohibition era. I almost forgot what a life-affirming show this was!
- “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” This always comes in useful, especially whenever people accuse you of being narcissistic and oblivious to criticism.
- Is it just me or is Judy Hofstadt the sweetest character that’s ever been introduced on Mad Men. In a show where even li’l Sally Draper has been shown to be rather manipulative and dishonest, Judy was that rare thing: a decent human being. And therefore, we’re never, ever, EVER going to see her again.
- The title of this episode is taken from Robert Browning’s poem in which the narrator chooses love, eternal and all-encompassing, over the transient majesty of an ancient city. There's not much love in evidence here. In fact, all there's a drab, mournfulness that hangs over the proceedings. If "Out of Town" was an incident packed episode, filled with flashbacks, sex (both homo and hetero) and recently fired American ambushing Englishmen with a well-timed, "Go to hell you limey bastard!" then "Love Among The Ruins" was in contrast a much more reflective meander. We got a sense of nascent upheaval, the stirrings of a world moving as relics of the past are cast aside, or uprooted in the name of progress. Whether it’s
