I admit I haven’t been enjoying this season as much as seasons past, but this episode made me hopeful that we’re back on track.
Don has very few friendships, and they’re each different in kind. His friendship Roger is conducted very much at Roger’s level — they drink, they hit on women and they make snarky jokes. His friendship with Anna was deeper, certainly, but she was more like a sister, or even a mother, to Don, than a buddy.
You rarely have friendships as intense and intimate as you do when you’re a child, and I felt like that was what this episode was showing us – that Don and Peggy have become best friends* the way little girls are best friends. They fight like kids do, innocently and brutally, holding nothing back. Then they fume and hurt and cry; and eventually, they forgive each other because they want to get back to gossiping and giggling and talking shit about their other friends. They confess their deepest secrets, cry some more, and then they turn to each other for comfort. This episode didn’t depict an all-nighter at the office, it depicted a sixth grade slumber party.
Don and Roger refer to the clique of Peter, Ken and Harry as “the kids,” which is notable because Peter is a partner, and because that trio is a step – either in age or in status – above the other clique presented in this episode, the one formed by Peggy, Joey, Danny and Rizzo. Anyway, it struck me as sad (as surely it was intended to) that Joey/Danny/Rizzo are totally unimpressed by Joanie. In their eyes, she’s not a dreamgirl, she’s a nagging schoolmarm. She’s no less beautiful than she was in seasons past, but she’s getting older, and the kids, they keep on getting younger.
*By “become best friends,” what I really mean is that Don kind of bullies Peggy into it, which makes sense I guess. Friends or not, Don is Peggy’s boss. Plus, even as low as Don is right now, he’s still masterfully good at getting what he wants from people.
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Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 8:03 am
The little kid angle is interesting, because I noticed throughout the episode that Don seemed to be acting somehow younger, like “one of the guys” — caring about sports was not what I would’ve expected, for instance, and he often takes on a more jovial tone that is very different from his normal “coldness and cruelty” approach to human interaction.
Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 11:48 am
[...] Spoiler Alert Thursday: Reminder JMS is expounding on Mad Men elsewhere. [...]
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 11:45 am
So how did Duck get into the office, anyway?
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 11:51 am
If you look closely, you can see that Roger’s office window is broken and there’s a grappling hook hanging from it.
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Oh, that makes sense.
Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Another thing — on the show it’s presented as perfectly natural that Peggy would get mad at Mark for inviting her family to her birthday dinner, mostly because Peggy is so persuasive when she complains about Mark, but really, was it so bad? It’s kind of unfair to say, as she does, that he used her birthday in order to get in good with a bunch of people who drive her crazy — this might be true, but it’s not like her family’s opinion has value to him independent of his desire to get close to her.
Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 5:58 pm
jms, agreed. But i think her problem is not: you used my family to get close to me. It is rather: you believed that by getting in good with my family you would get in good with me, which means that you fail to see my independence from my family’s opinion, which means that you fail to genuinely understand me.
Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 8:44 am
At the same time, isn’t Mark her attempt to be a “normal girl,” even though she really isn’t? For instance, she outright lies about being a virgin, etc. So yes, he misunderstands her, but she’s also setting him up to fail.