Mad Men Note: Back to School
At the sound of the Mad Men theme — one of the best ever — I was surprised by an uncomfortable feeling: Back to school. Kathleen and I would be spending the next few months with Don and Betty; Peggy, Pete, and Joan; and the rest of the old gang at Sterling Cooper. If the first two seasons were anything to go by, we’d spend at least half the week mulling over each Sunday’s episode, which, at least for the first month or so, we’d watch twice, first at ten and then at eleven, for the “reprise.”
In the paper today, Frank Rich ventured to suggest that this may be the year that audiences, hitherto modest, catch up with the critics. Let’s hope so! And yet it would be hard to imagine a less inviting season opener than this evening’s episode. Those Brits — how were new audiences supposed to care about “Moneypenny”? And the whole “Head of Accounts” routine.
True, there was some really good stuff involving Don and Sal. On a trip to Baltimore, to assure the London Fog boss (and his son) that the company is still very much on Sterling Cooper’s “mind,” despite the departure of a head of accounts (whom we’d never seen before, had we?), a stewardess flirts her way into Don’s firing range. You do have to wonder how he manages to summon any interest in such chickadees, because even at the outset he looks as though he is haunted by Shakespeare’s Sonnet CXXIX —
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so.
Happily, the camera does not linger on Don’s dalliance with Sherry the Stewardess. It moves to another room in the hotel, to which Sal has summoned a bellboy to fix his air conditioner. Sal is having a number of other moving parts serviced when the firebell sounds an alarm. You feel about this exactly the way Sal does. Dashing down the fire escape — what kind of hotel is this, anyway? — Don chances to peer into Sal’s room. What he sees is safe for work, but only technically.
The climax of this episode-within-the-episode occurs on the flight back to New York. Sal looks as though he’s tormented by (a) constipation and (b) the knowledge that his colon has been rammed full of explosives. Don leans into him and asks him for an honest answer. Oh, Jesus! Don proceeds to outline a new London Fog campaign. He describes a commuter in a subway car who is looking at a girl in a raincoat. We see the girl from behind, but we can tell that she is naked beneath the raincoat: the commuter is being flashed. Don leans in a little closer. “Limit Your Exposure.” Three little words; a word to the wise. It’s a small masterpiece of indirect discourse. Shakespeare himself might have signed up to take the course where they taught that one.
Next time, though, we need more Peggy. Lots more Peggy. After all, she’s going to take over eventually, isn’t she?