(Photo: AMC)
“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
The fourth episode of Mad Men's sixth season served as a reset, a reminder of exactly where in American history that this season of Mad Men is taking place, and how its aging cast is, or isn't changing with the times.
We saw last week, when we got a glimpse into Don Draper's childhood, that for as much as Don has always been able to "keep moving forward", as much as he may believe that "...change is neither good or bad, it simply is", he is a man that is finding himself left behind as society propels itself forward.
There would have been a day when Don would have walked into the Heinz pitch we saw here and walked out with a client. He may have had to tweak the artwork, or change the tagline around, but those things were ancillary. As he so memorably told Peggy in Season 2, "You are the product. You feeling something." He may not have known precisely what the prospective client wanted, but he knew how to elicit that feeling from them. Here, with Heinz, he was just out of sync with what the younger executive was looking for. When Peggy, Don's protege, tried employing some of the same verbiage that Don used to find great success with, we saw her fail as well.
1968 is a new day, even if women and minorities are still being treated as less than, as we saw in the Joan and Dawn storylines in this episode. Dawn has it twice as difficult, first being an African American in this day, just "trying to keep her head down", as she said, and also as a woman trying to make it in an office filled with boozing chauvinists.
Joan, though now a partner after her dealings with Herb from Jaguar, still finds herself treated as a "glorified secretary" at SCDP. When her friend Kate came for a visit, and the two went prowling at The Electric Circus, an Avant-garde club, we saw the other part of her struggle, as she's ahead of her time in terms of being a career woman, but more in line with Don's generation in terms of dealing with the times that are a-changing.
We saw Don and Megan drift further apart as well, as in the ultimate act of hypocrisy, Don threw a jealous fit over Megan having a love scene in her soap opera. He showed up at her set, for the first time, just to make sure she wouldn't be able to enjoy the success that came with her expanded role on the show. In typical Draper fashion, he left from there and went straight to his mistress.
If there was a glimmer of hope in the episode, if there is such a thing at this point in Don's journey, it came in the final scene. In the interaction between Don and Sylvia, his eyes were drawn to the cross she wore around her neck.
Sylvia: I pray for you.
Don: For me to come back?
Sylvia: No. For you to find peace.
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
The fourth episode of Mad Men's sixth season served as a reset, a reminder of exactly where in American history that this season of Mad Men is taking place, and how its aging cast is, or isn't changing with the times.
We saw last week, when we got a glimpse into Don Draper's childhood, that for as much as Don has always been able to "keep moving forward", as much as he may believe that "...change is neither good or bad, it simply is", he is a man that is finding himself left behind as society propels itself forward.
There would have been a day when Don would have walked into the Heinz pitch we saw here and walked out with a client. He may have had to tweak the artwork, or change the tagline around, but those things were ancillary. As he so memorably told Peggy in Season 2, "You are the product. You feeling something." He may not have known precisely what the prospective client wanted, but he knew how to elicit that feeling from them. Here, with Heinz, he was just out of sync with what the younger executive was looking for. When Peggy, Don's protege, tried employing some of the same verbiage that Don used to find great success with, we saw her fail as well.
1968 is a new day, even if women and minorities are still being treated as less than, as we saw in the Joan and Dawn storylines in this episode. Dawn has it twice as difficult, first being an African American in this day, just "trying to keep her head down", as she said, and also as a woman trying to make it in an office filled with boozing chauvinists.
Joan, though now a partner after her dealings with Herb from Jaguar, still finds herself treated as a "glorified secretary" at SCDP. When her friend Kate came for a visit, and the two went prowling at The Electric Circus, an Avant-garde club, we saw the other part of her struggle, as she's ahead of her time in terms of being a career woman, but more in line with Don's generation in terms of dealing with the times that are a-changing.
We saw Don and Megan drift further apart as well, as in the ultimate act of hypocrisy, Don threw a jealous fit over Megan having a love scene in her soap opera. He showed up at her set, for the first time, just to make sure she wouldn't be able to enjoy the success that came with her expanded role on the show. In typical Draper fashion, he left from there and went straight to his mistress.
If there was a glimmer of hope in the episode, if there is such a thing at this point in Don's journey, it came in the final scene. In the interaction between Don and Sylvia, his eyes were drawn to the cross she wore around her neck.
Sylvia: I pray for you.
Don: For me to come back?
Sylvia: No. For you to find peace.
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