Did anyone fall for the Robert Kennedy fake-out? I did. And I should have known better. For one thing, if Mad Men were to cast someone as RFK, they would have cast someone who could do a better impression. For another, Mad Men’s not the sort of show to bring in a historical figure to save the day deus ex machina like that. Don’s gambit may result in long-term gains—tune in next week?—but in the short term all SCDP gets is a chance to work pro bono for the American Cancer Society. Maybe.
And maybe we should remove the “C” from SCDP now that Bert Cooper has taken his shoes and gone home. In other words, Don may have just made the a brilliant tactical move that will save his company, closing SCDP off from the area of advertising with which they’d enjoyed their greatest financial success but, in theory at least, opening up the rest of the world. Or he may have just shot a hole in the bottom of a sinking ship. The episode ends with SCDP throwing out human cargo in order to stay afloat that much longer. This season began with an optimism that matched its office’s spotless, practically glowing, white interiors. Now it’s all clutter and confusion and the atmosphere stinks of doom. Things are, in other words, not looking up.
I’m indebted to Twitter pal David J. Loehr (a.k.a. @dloehr) for pointing me toward the real story of Emerson Foote, an advertising giant who publicly criticized the tobacco industry in 1964, resigning from the chairmanship of McCann-Erickson and devoting himself to anti-smoking advocacy. (He later came back.) Foote was of the generation before Don’s and, unlike Don, he hated the cigarette industry in earnest. Which makes him both an inspiration for Don and a stark contrast to the character, who pens his opportunistic manifesto after ridding his notebook of the reflective musings we saw a few episodes back. Goodbye earnestness. Hello, let’s do what we have to do to survive.
Will he? Who knows? Don’s in deep now, for sure, and not in business. (When you have one lover telling you to ask another lover to set up dinner dates, your life has gotten pretty complicated.) I’m fascinated, too, by how he arrived at his decision, staring deeply at Midge’s art work and seeing… what? It’s an undistinguished piece of abstract art, especially in contrast to the kind that adorns the SCDP walls. Does he see her addiction and make a connection to how tobacco works? And, if so, is it a testament to tobacco’s drip or the height of cynicism that leads him to smoke while writing it? (And later while talking about it.)
As for Midge, I think Don went through the same stages most Mad Men viewers must have gone through this week: he’s excited to see her, intrigued to learn what she’s been up to, then deeply saddened when he finds out. I’m not sure I buy Midge’s current state. She always seemed too self-possessed to end up in the junkie den of some loser “playwright.” Then again, drug addiction tends to cut through things like self-possession pretty quickly and Midge is deep in its grips, chasing the feeling of “drinking a hundred bottles of whiskey while someone licks your tits” even though it means humiliating herself in front of her old boyfriend. To paraphrase what’s either the best or worst line David Mamet ever wrote, that’s why they call it heroin. The show may have had sadder images than Midge stroking Don’s leg while he wrote a check, but none come to mind. (Nice to see Rosemarie DeWitt again, however.)
Is Midge’s fate too much? Is Betty wheedling her way into continuing to see a child psychiatrist to match her childlike psyche too much? Maybe. I bought it in both instances, however. And, even if Betty’s scene with the psychiatrist felt like too much at the time, her reaction to learning that Sally was spending time with Glen was appropriately childlike, as much an expression of jealousy as concern. (To say nothing of bad parenting: way to make Glen seem like forbidden fruit.) Weird, isn’t it, that Sally and Glen’s friendship seems almost sweet. She talks about her dreams. He tells her how to suck up to her mom. He offers her backwash. She describes eternity using the Land O’ Lakes logo. (Chip off the ol’ block, eh kid?) But if Henry and Betty make good on their plan to move, Sally won’t have a chance to be around such “low-caliber people.” (Unless, of course, she sneaks out, which she’s already proven herself capable of doing.)