'You People': Mad Men Recapped
The Drapers' whirlwind Roman adventure was a distant memory in this week's Mad Men, in which Don's traditionally slippery midseason slide into self-destruction was greased more than usual with the sudsy residue of nighttime soap operas. Related: Betty won't make Don a cuckold with just any tawdry old governor's aide. And Sal! Poor Sal. Parse the moves and machinations after the jump.
Viewers can glean the spirit of the episode from the first shot of Betty on her fainting couch -- a reliably erotic convention from a couple weeks ago, but on which she now has an unidentified male partner. There's a touch, a peeling back of her dress top, the frilly fringe of her bra, and the man leaning in, and... goddamnit, Conrad Hilton! Must you call so early in the morning and rustle Betty from her dreams? But that's Don's deal with the hotelier, whose proposed Hilton on the moon would be the capstone of his more aggressive "international" growth. "America is wherever we look," he tells Don, who scratches out notes for a proposal to be in Hilton's hands by noon.
The Hilton subplot yields both the best and worst of the episode. Connie is quickly turning into the new Grandpa Gene, a charmingly old-fashioned and utterly crazy coot whose portentous insights into God, communism, the Marshall plan, Khrushchev, Disneyland, manifest destiny and myriad other influences on American hegemony have come to dominate too much precious time that could be dedicated to, say, Joan Holloway or Sally Draper's own plot for world conquest. He acknowledges he thinks of Don like a son, maybe even more than he does his own: "You didn't have what they have, and you understand." As such, he can confess deep disappointment in Don when the admittedly great international Hilton campaign doesn't include that high-rise on the moon.
As both a fatherless child of the Depression and an industry titan of the Cold War, Don is vulnerable to and even consumed by all of this. Which of course doesn't stop him from pulling over en route to work one day, picking up Miss Farrell on her early morning jogging rounds. "Who are you?" Don asks. "I run into you in the middle of the night? How did that happen?" Don't be daft, Don. It's called a plot contrivance. She won't accept his invitation for coffee, though, which is probably just as well; he's got work to do, and holding Don off will just make the culmination of their bedward journey all the more rewarding.
Betty starts an epistolary exchange with Henry Francis, which culminates in his visit to the house when no one else is home. Not so smart, especially when Clara walks in and Henry springs a Rockefeller fundraiser on Betty just to have a more licit excuse to have dropped by. The letters are fun, though; it makes me wish I wrote more of them, and that there were people sitting at the other end of the correspondence narrating their own words. All right, who am I kidding -- I just want to be Betty Draper's pen pal. (I smell an end-of-season promotion, AMC!)
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I don't think the "you people" meant gay people so much as the "moral" crowd who only think about doing what is right, and not about what needs to be done to get ahead.
He practically told Sal that he should've slept with the man because he is the client and the client is always right. And come on, how many gay people do you think Don knows in 1963 to make such a generalization. Everyone was in the closet. And what exactly is the generalization pertaining to gays that Don would be making?
I love it now that people believe Don has flexed his superiority "heterosexual" muscle everyone now thinks he's a jerk. A few episodes ago he was everyone's favorite dashing womanizer. And I would always ask myself if I was watching the same show as everyone else. This guy has been an asshole since the first episode, but I guess as always it's better to be a misogynist than homophobic.
Harry Crane isn't the Lucky Strike account guy; that would be Pete Campbell. Crane's the head of television.
Yes, I meant that Harry is on the television account for Lucky, and I realize now that only he could be on the TV account. So apologies.
I don't think anyone's ever thought of Don as anything more than a predatory misogynist sociopath. Which doesn't necessarily make him less fascinating. But I totally believe "you people" was targeted as a gay slur. It followed Sal swearing on his mother's grave, to which Don responded, "Are you sure you want to do that?" Don didn't believe him after what he saw in Baltimore.
I totally agree about that comment being a gay slur. And thanks for pointing out the ridiculous plot "coincidence" of Don driving past Miss Pre-Dawn Jog. What single women jogged before dawn's early light in 1963 for crying out loud? It actually made me think he was hallucinating, which might have been more interesting. Alas, no.
Conrad died in 1979 at age 91. The old bastard will probably outlive Don, as Sally will likely have killed him in his sleep by then.
The thing with Miss Farrell is going to end in more than tears. That news radio thing in Don's car about the two women dead in their apartment was spooky. She gives off kind of a brilliant-but-obsessive-suicide vibe. I'm probably wrong, but this is going to be ugly, and I can't wait to make popcorn for it.
I think the radio story was about the "Career Girl Murders", which were grisly and sparked off a lot of civil rights business when the NYPD tried (repeatedly) to frame an innocent black men for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Career_Girls_Murders
Did the teaser for next week suggest, in its random way, that Don is about to ... leave his wife? We're going to need some more cast members soon, if so...
I would think that back in the day, women would be more likely to run by themselves in the dark than they are now. There may have been less runners back then, but the cluelessness was greater.
Oh, I've no doubt it was safer (and perceived as safe), but I think few non-athletes jogged for their health, right? The jogging craze didn't come until later, when Forrest Gump started it, amirite?
Signed, NeedsToGetaLife
Well, the 60's is the decade when women started crashing marathons as a form of protest since they weren't officially allowed, something this character would be attuned to. Also, to this day, you can't swing an ipod Nano amongst a flock of runners without hitting a teacher or three; It's got to be the most common profession amongst this sport.
If there's one thing I've learned about the teasers, it's to ignore them. To call them "misleading" is to call Don a "flirt".
Everything seems to be burning all around Don and all he can do is runaway to another woman. Obviously what Don did to Sal was wrong on a human level, but I wonder if Hilton had not pushed him so much in the episode if he would have attempted at least to save Sal. Full review of the episode.
http://th3tvobsessed.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-mad-men-season-3-episode-9-wee.html