BLOGGING MAD MEN, Season 7 Episode 2: The War Of The Roses

Everybody on this show is at their funniest and best when they're on a crazy warpath. Remember Pete tumbling down the stairs in fury last season? Remember how great that was? Now imagine if a character was falling down those stairs repeatedly, in slow motion, for an entire episode. That is what is happening to Peggy, and it's amazing.

The parade of indignities begins on the elevator, where Ginsberg tricks Peggy into revealing that she has no plans for this evening, which is Valentine's Day. She takes roses off of her secretary's desk, mistakenly believing they are intended for her, then double-mistakenly decides they've been sent by Ted. AND THEN she triple-mistakenly decides to rebuff Ted's (imagined) advances with a (rather thickly) veiled missive about an angry client, which ripples confusedly throughout the office. It's an A-bomb of embarrassment, and Peggy's poor secretary Shirley, who loses her flowers, is just the first casualty of war. Everything else just dies slower.

Don is still putting the "under" in "underemployed," sleeping in until noon and then eating Ritz Crackers in a bathrobe, which is the precise image in which he most resembles my own father, and probably yours as well. It's total #Dadcore, and it's the first of many Don moments in this episode that hits unexpectedly, and hard. He's drawing lines on his liquor bottles and there are roaches in his apartment. ("That's a little much."-Franz Kafka)

Sally Draper and her friends are cool. Is Sally Draper the hero of this show? She might be. Remember when we thought it was Ginsberg? Sally Draper misses a train back to Hailsham after a classmate's mother's funeral and goes to SCetc to find her father. But of course, her father isn't in his office. It's Evil Mr. Rogers, and turning the corner and running into that motherfucker is scarier than the last shot of Enemy.

Elsewhere, the adventures of California Pete continue. It's funny, but Pete's growth on this show actually tracks--you just have to subtract 18-20 years from his real age to get whatever his emotional age is now. Here, he's finally in college. Pete Campbell is in a state school of the mind, and Ted is his nervous roommate, mopey yet again because Pete forgot to leave a sock on the door.

Roger is delighted that an old woman called him a kike and disappointed that Evil Mr. Rogers isn't as amused. You can read that as just another hint of the divided leadership of SCetc., but I prefer to imagine that it's literally where all the trouble stems from. Roger just wants to laugh about racist old ladies, and Mr. Rogers just wants to frown! The conflict continues from there to a deal Pete is finalizing with a CA dealership association: Tim Gunn wants Bob Benson involved, Roger doesn't, Pete wants all the glory, Ted wants mom and dad to stop fighting, and Zac really wants any excuse for Bob Benson to show up again. The fight is partially exacerbated by shoddy conference call technology in a scene which which is, along with other scenes in this episode, an editing marvel.

Don is taking lunch meetings and pretending he still has a job. Pro-tip, Don: people who still have jobs don't say, "I still have a job!" like every other sentence. That's a serious tactical error! He comes home to find Sally in his living room and the clumsy ass-covering game begins. Don's gotten so bad at this over the years, huh? He finally fesses up, in a ferociously truth-telling car ride which once again strikes some kind of neurological funny bone for me that I won't be exploring until I can afford a therapist. To do otherwise would just be a waste of money, right?

At SC&c, Dawn is dismayed by Evil Mr. Rogers's handling of the Sally situation, and Evil Mr. Rogers turns out to be dismayed that she is black. It's another scrap of kindling on the slowly burning racial bonfire of the vanities that has been threatening to swallow SC&c whole for years, but this one results in a game of career-advancing (racist) musical chairs: Dawn eventually ends up taking over for Joan, and Joan solidifies her position as a partner and Accountswoman. It's a complicated victory, though still a point we can post on the scoreboard for our team. But as MC Skat Kat so artfully once observed--it's always two steps forward and one step back with this shit. Roger calls California Pete to let him know he rolled over on the dealership issue; Gunn won. Pete, perhaps speaking in the voice of the same teasing meta-poltergeist that led to Romneygate 2012, says that sometimes he feels like he is living in some kind of sun-bleached purgatory. LIKE MEGAN!? OMGGGGGGG. "Just cash the checks," Ted tells him. "You're gonna die one day." (Like the Sopranos before it, Mad Men is hands-down the funniest show on TV.)

As Don drops Sally off at school, she steps out of his car and says, simply, "Happy Valentine's Day. I love you." It hits Don like a truck, and the great Zombie's song "This Will Be Our Year" starts playing as he sits there and absorbs the moment. It's beautiful. I love this god damn show. -ZL

BLOGGING MAD MEN, Season 7 Episode 1: On A Balcony

MAD MEN! The drama of our time, which is yet not of our time! The deepest and most reflective show since The Sopranos, going out with no clear successor trailing behind it! The most ridiculously-speculated-about show since, well, ever! SPOILER ALERT: NOBODY IS SECRETLY DEAD!

I have always loved this show, and thought it would be fun to recap the first seven episodes of season seven as we rapidly approach the premiere of the second set of seven episodes, just seven days away! Seven save us! (If you're here looking for Game Of Thrones stuff, I'll get back to that soon.)

So what's happening, as we begin this round? What's everybody been up to since Don bared his tarnished heart and whisky-soaked soul in a meeting with Hershey's and was immediately thrown out on his ass for doing so? Which characters will inexplicably have dropped off the face of the earth? (As long as Bob Benson is still alive and well, I don't really care!)

Freddy Rumsen is back, and boy is he suddenly talented! It's almost literally impossible to imagine that this regressive recovering alcoholic could pitch a spectacular commercial for a watch company, and yet here he is in Peggy's office, killing it! Peggy is somewhere so firmly between impressed and incredulous (incredupressed) that Freddy is just like, "Thanks, you asshole." Peggy is still an asshole, by the way, but she remains our asshole. There's a good way to say that, and then there's the way I just said it.

Meanwhile, Roger's life has clearly become even more awesome than it was before, with naked folks lying around in the darkness like the right-hand third of The Garden Of Earthly Delights. Roger rules. That is all. Ginsburg is still raging against the system and Stan is still just crashing on the system's couch for a spell, but they're doing it with different facial hair now. And who is in Don's office these days, but EVIL MR. ROGERS!?

What about Kenny Cosgrove, AKA Ben Hargrove (sci-fi stories), AKA Jen Margrove (romance novels), AKA Len Mossgrowth (nature and travel guides)? Well, see, men react to power vacuums differently; some of them rise to the occasion and seize what's ripe for the plucking, and others shirk from the spotlight, their lack of ambition fully realized. And some men go a third way: totally gosh-dang fucknuts. Crazy Ken, screaming with his eyepatch practically popping off of his head, is great fun to watch. He's all pissy about the prospect of having to meet with a perceived underling from Butler Shoes, and so he dumps it on Joan's desk. Now, Joan has always been the kind of person who reacts to a power vacuum by stumbling into it half-informed and half-lucky, and we'll see how the formula works out for her this time.

Peggy blows Freddy's pitch in a meeting, mangling "It's not a time piece, it's a conversation piece" into "It's time for a conversation."

"You will feel relieved when you plop it into your drink!" Peggy Olson for Alka-Seltzer

"Think in a different, better way." Peggy Olson for Apple

"They'll think maybe you were born with that Mabeliene look!" Peggy Olson for Mabeliene

But I'm not sure that Evil Mr. Rogers would have cared either way. This guy kind of sucks! Where's Don? And then he finally appears: Don Draper, shit-canned Man's Man, stepping out into the California sun in a deeply weird, speed-ramped sequence that feels like a real editing misfire. Megan's picking him up at the airport, and Don has to sit in the passenger seat because Megan "can't move the seat."

"I can't move the seat, there's a big clunky visual metaphor stuck in the way."-Megan 'driver's seat' Draper.

Back at SC&etc., Ted Chaough, a sad cartoon puppy brought to life by a wizard, turns up after presumably a long cooling-off period in California. Peggy has no time for his bullshit, a point that she will make abundantly, excessively clear in the coming weeks. (Don't worry, she doesn't stab anybody else. YET.)

Don meets Megan's agent--Tobias Funke's brother Frankie--and Frankie Funke has good news: a callback audition! Since Megan's plotlines are just increasingly broad parodies of showbiz arcs, I suppose we should start taking bets on whether or not we'll get to "Megan The Porn Star" by the close of business on this show. Only classy adult films, of course. What attracts her to it will be the scripts. 

Joan meets the shoe man, who despite all evidence to the contrary is not played by a grown-up AJ Soprano, and he informs her that he's using his new position as a shoe company's head of advertising to drop SCetc. as a client and take over. Remember what I said about power vacuums? Joan is like, "Well, fuck!" Ersatz AJ leaves, and Joan is like, "Fuck fuck fuck!"

Megan shows Don her apartment, a creepy little coke den in the Hollywood Hills. They're pretending to be married and Don is pretending to still have a job. Remember how weird it was when you realized Megan knew all about Dick Whitman? How strange and refreshing honesty felt? Now honesty is back to feeling like an alien concept. Honesty is Pete Campbell in a Polo shirt.

That's right folks! Our old pal Pete Campbell is taking to La-La-Land like a fly on a monolith in outer space, which is to say it's bizarre and ill-fitting, but he likes it. Or likes hating it. Who knows with that guy? California Pete is great fun, and so is Real Estate Barbie!

Don buys Megan a TV, and she gets mad because all of her actor friends are the starving artist type and she'd like to pretend to be one, too. Don thinks this is stupid, and wants Megan to have a big TV so she can be bombarded with endless ominous omens In Living Color like he is all day long. "Hey, what's this, a TV show about The Fountain Of Youth? Oh, who's that, President Nixon? Cool! This all bodes well!" Don and Megan go to bed and begin the most bloodless coital initiation since Rosemary's Baby (the first time, on the floor. Not the time where she fucks the devil.) Remember when it was hot between these two? Of course, Megan continues her reign as the undisputed sideboob queen of Mad Men.

Elsewhere, Peggy is an apartment super now, or something. Abrupt super plotlines were very hot in 2014. Shoutout to Sarah Braverman!

Roger emerges from his sex palace to visit his daughter, Minnie Mouse, who tells him about her next beach party which is of course scheduled at Chappaquiddick Island on July 19th, and her dinner plans with Sharon Tate on August 10th. Not really--she's like, a Unitarian now or something. Whatever.

Don sits down on a plane next to a good-looking woman, and notes out loud how you want to sit next to a woman like that, but instead it's "a man in a hairpiece eating a banana." Don has a gift for painting a picture, huh? The woman, who just took a sleeping pill and should maybe be alarmed, instead comments that he should blame Madison Avenue for his expectations. Which could either be unsettling for Don or an exciting recognition over his God-like cultural sway. 

"Now I am become Sex, destroyer of dreams." -J. Donald Drapenheimer

Peggy tries to re-do her botched watch pitch (say that five times fast!) but Evil Mr. Rogers ain't hearing it. His approach to creativity is a little more workman-like and steady than Don's, and the whole staff is learning to walk on that treadmill after years of Moon Shoes. Meanwhile, Joan calls up the Shoe Bomber again and manages to suck his balls straight through the phone line in ten seconds flat. The only frustrating thing is that nobody else is in the room! When Joan cuts down patriarchy trees in the woods and nobody is there to see it, does it make a sound?

On the plane, Don and his seatmate/angel of death discuss her husband, who died of alcoholism. Don has trouble hearing her over all the bells tolling for him. She keeps piling on the bad vibes to make sure we have plenty for the season--remember when Don was reading Dante's Inferno on the beach? This woman doesn't have a tattoo that says Purgatario on her ass, but she might as well. In fact, she might! But we'll never know, since Don turns down her offer for dark, morbid sex and goes home alone to watch Nixon being inaugurated. Like I said: BAD FUCKING VIBES.

He's joined by Freddy Rumsen, who, surprise surprise, isn't getting his ideas on his own after all. But what he's giving Don in exchange is rather surprising: lessons in sobriety. What a twist! (Yes, this is what passes for a twist on Mad Men, WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR FIRST INDICATION THAT NO ONE WAS SECRETLY DEAD YOU IDIOTS.) But don't let that hopeful thought steer you away from the gloom and doom--our parting image is Don trying to close the door to his balcony, finding himself unable to close that door, and crossing the threshold to the balcony to sit down and drink as a cold wind blows. Fun! See you tomorrow! -ZL