SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching season six of Mad Men. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode 10.
Catch up with Gwilym Mumford episode nine blog here.
'I hate hypocrites like hippies who cash cheques from Dow Chemical' – Jim Cutler
Don Draper has become an ampersand. Bumped from the titlepiece of Sterling Cooper & Partners (or as Don figures it "SC ampersand P"), there is now just a symbol where his name used to be. Or, if you prefer, a cipher.
Don takes the news of his removal with a shrug. His mind is elsewhere. It's probably in California, where he goes to discover himself (whether it be with bohemian Europeans or mid-ranking Hollywood hedonists). If not there, then perhaps in that interior space where he has exchanges with his pregnant wife and a deceased PFC Dinkins.
Are these drug-induced imaginings, both in this episode and the whole speed-fuelled soup hunt of two weeks ago, revelations driven up from the subconscious, or just a bunch of intoxicated babble? That's the problem with drugs – you're never quite sober enough to tell. Don may have been blissfully happy at the appearance of his wife, pregnant and dressed as a hippy, at his Hollywood pool party, but he was actually drowning in a swimming pool at the same time. As for Dinkins, Don has been troubled by him ever since they met in that Hawaiian bar, but it's unclear as to why. Is he a surrogate for Dick Whitman or a symbol of the destruction being wreaked on a generation by the Vietnam war? If the latter, then why is Don so otherwise disengaged with the conflict?
I keep feeling that Don is heading to some grand epiphany – and for what it's worth I thought last week's pillow talk with Betty seemed to be the frankest, most informative exchange he's had in seasons – but perhaps, as with an acid trip, the promised truth will never quite arrive. Back on Earth, Don's constant introspection means he's almost entirely disengaged with SC&P's silly office politics. So there are some upsides to drug use.
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Those office politics in full. While Don and Roger (in classic form this week, it has to be said) are off drumming up business in La La Land, Ted Chaough and Jim Cutler are left running the shop. Ted, like the mother hen he is, wants everything to run smoothly. Cutler meanwhile, who I only realised last week is this guy, wants to clear out the entirety of the SCDP creative department. There's a tension, as I'm sure you can see.
Jim's scorched-earth policy is inspired by an abrasive encounter with Ginsberg, but it's a traditional power move that seeks to change the facts on the ground before anyone else can do something about it. Ted turns puce at this thought, to the extent that you wonder how the two of them ever built a business together in the first place. The final result is that Jim, via Bob Benson, manages to lose both Roger's wine account and his own initial from the company name. That may not seem like the sort of high-powered horse trading you'd expect from the titans of Madison Avenue, but people in business have been killed over less.
******
If you're looking for real power moves, then Joan Holloway's your woman. Hooked up with an Avon executive by Kate, her partner in divorced debauchery, she uses her lunch date to try to bag the company a new account. The twist is that she wants to manage that account herself. Upon conveying her news to Peggy and Ted, however, the account is given directly to Pete Campbell. Pete doesn't want it, but not as much as Joan doesn't want him to have it. Another meeting with Mr Avon is arranged (is it me or do all these middle-aged corporate guys look the same, from Avon to Jaguar to Heinz) and Pete is not informed.
It's interesting to watch the dynamics of the lunch. Peggy doesn't really want to be there when she realises it's vaguely illicit. Joan doesn't mind about that and is loving her role as the facilitator, prompting conversation, attempting to tell Avon what they want to hear. In fact, she knows Avon's problems better than Peggy, undercutting her suggestion that Avon ladies should tour offices so as to attract the money of the new working woman with the observation that "there's no doorbell in an office".
This all prompts a bit of a set-to between Peggy and Joan, dragging up the bad blood of previous seasons. But while Peggy, now a creative on the inside of the tent, is more concerned with watching her back than engaging in an act of sisterly solidarity, she still opts to bail Joan out of her inevitable showdown with an incandescent Pete. Peggy fakes a phone message from the Avon connection, which suggests that Joan might well have sealed the deal even without Pete. Now, for everything to be just fine, all Joan has to do with that deal is actually seal it.
******
As the weeks progress, my original prediction of Bob Benson becoming a mass murderer looks less and less likely. He listens to self-help LPs, but it seems that he is genuinely nice and cheery, and that he really does just want to help out, rather than help out then dump the unconscious body in the back of his Buick.
This week's example of the beneficence of Bob Benson is his double intervention to save poor Mike Ginsberg. Furious about the war, or at least just furious, Ginzo unwisely chooses to turn his ire on Jim Cutler, who in turn quickly decides that the anti-war rhetoric is cover for a slacker who doesn't want to work. Then, just like that, Bob appears out of nowhere and barks at Ginzo to calm down. Disaster is averted.
Later, after Bob's intercession has seen him been given the bum hand of the Manischewitz account, he is forced to confront Ginzo again. The young man is responsible for the Manischewitz creative, but instead of prepping up, he's melting down, quoting the Bhagavad Gita by way of Oppenheimer ("Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds") in front of a bemused Stan Rizzo. By invoking the Jewish roots of the Manischewitz brand, before revealing its non-denominational business practices, Bob manages to convince Ginzo that he's not really doing the devil's work and gets the boy back on his feet. All that and helping Joan look after her child? No doubt next week Bob will open a shelter for acid-damaged account men.
This week's notes
Roger's insistence that big ad men don't prep almost blew up in his face during the Carnation meeting. But am I right in thinking that his crack about being their new girl actually swung the meeting back around? In which case it's just another example of Sterling's Gold.
"Nice rapping with you Rog." Last time we saw Danny Siegel he was the world's most pathetic ad man, a little bit of talent and a terrible pipe-smoking habit, all puffed up by nepotism. Now he's a Hollywood big shot who abhors violence unless it's applied to Roger Sterling's groin. Well done that rather unlikable man. His Alice in Wonderland never got made though.
Don smoked weed with Megan in Hawaii and all he ended up doing was staying late in a bar. But hashish on a hookah and he's blacking out in swimming pools. That is some serious hashish.
Time stamps
The riot at the Democratic national convention in Chicago was just another of the events that shocked America in 1968. Joan Holloway fulfills the now traditional role of "character looking distressed while watching TV", while Megan gets scared for no reason (and far more scared than she was when there were riots in her actual city). But it is shocking see the scale of these riots. They lasted for five days and involved pitched battles between protesters and more than 25,000 police and troops.
