Roger, Mona, Betty, and Don having dinner in "Ladies Room"
Photo Credit: AMC TV
It’s rewatch time!! For the first time ever this summer we
will be watching an old season of a television show over the course of several
weeks. Installments will be posted Sundays and Wednesdays with the posts
spoiling only the episode that is being talked about. This summer the rewatch
is on the first season of Mathew Weiner’s 1960’s period piece Mad Men, one of
the great first seasons of television.
Some thoughts on Mad Men’s Second episode just as soon as I
casually throw a Television out the window….
“We should be asking ourselves what do women want.”
-Don
What do women want? That is the question that Don Draper
asks over and over again throughout the second hour of Mad Men “Ladies Room.” After
the first hour of Mad Men focused mostly on establishing the tone and the main
characters of the show the second hour takes a bit of a left turn and focuses
on the women of the show and how the men understand, or don’t understand them
(on a side note I was wrong about Trudy making her first appearance in this episode
as Pete is gone the whole hour up at the Niagra Falls (who’s Pete created
tagline is victim to a nicely timed joke)). Overall “Ladies Room” is a much
better episode than the pilot and a much better overall representation of what
Mad Men was, and still is, on a week to week basis.
The primary woman presented in “Ladies Room” is Don’s wife
Betty. After the kind of bad surprise introduction last week Mathew Weiner and
crew do a wonderful job of establishing Betty as both a character and an image
(more on the image part in a second). As a character Betty works surprisingly
well here (both on an initial level and on the level that I don’t end up liking
Betty a lot in a few seasons but that’s a discussion for another time). January
Jones plays Betty well here as a loyal housewife with childlike naive and
vulnerable nature. Betty gossips with a local neighbor and ultimately doesn’t pay
attention to much else outside of her own little self contained life with her
husband, kids, and neighborhood friends.
The complication with Betty is that she is a little bit of a
nervous wreck sometimes. Her hands begin to shake and she freezes up in panic
which allows for a mild car accident midway through the episode. This is where
Don’s perception of Betty begins to creep into the episode and where my (and
probably a few readers) hindsight into the character from watching the entire
series so far begins to play in. I think the sequences of Don trying to wrap
his head around Betty throughout the episode play well regardless of the
hindsight but I think there is more of an understanding gained about the exact
complexity of the relationship with more understanding of Don (which I’ll talk
about in full after the main review as a bit of an aside for veterans of the
series). Either way it seems obvious enough thematically to work well here.
Throughout the episode Don doesn’t understand how to deal
with the idea of Betty’s nervousness. It seems in the episode that Don relates
the nervous shakes to the happiness instead of the common understanding of a
psychological disorder (and yes it’s because it’s the sixties). Don tries to
wrap his head around exactly why Betty isn’t happy and looks for ways to pamper
her with different ways out of fear that it’s regarding their relationship
(because you know Don likes sleeping around as we see again in this episode)
but as he sees that Betty begins worrying too much about the kids as well he
gives in and resorts to Psychiatry (which again gets lambasted by the men
throughout the episode). Then at the end of the episode it begins to become
clear that Don still doesn’t get Betty as he begins to spy on her via the phone
call with the Psychiatrist at the end of the episode.
The other aspect of the episode revolving around Don (in
ultimately a Don light episode) is Don’s mysterious past. It’s hinted at ever
so briefly in the pilot (so brief that I didn’t really mention it in Sunday’s
recap of the pilot) that Don has a bit of an opaque past but here it is in full
force. Don brushes off any questions from Roger at dinner regarding his
childhood (even as simple as “did you have a nanny?”) and when asked by Betty
he simply says “It’s like politics, religion, or sex, why talk about it?” The
scenes are subtle and small enough that they begin to mount the mystery of Don
Draper without overtly calling it out. Throughout the season this element is
left to simmer and it begins to quite nicely here.
The other big character focus of “Ladies Room” is Peggy and her
dysfunctional relationship with all the guys in the office. Yes it seems that
every guy Peggy befriends in the office (this week with the playful friendship that
she begins to develop with Paul Kinsey) wants to have sex with her, and when she
turns them down they mistakenly think that she’s doing it with Draper, the one
guy in the office who as we found out in the pilot doesn’t want that kind of relationship
with his secretary. The sequences with Kinsey also gave us another explanation
of the office this time in more of a business since. This tour worked better as
it introduced the audience to the workplace without throwing the sixties in the
audience’s face. It also worked as it seemed throughout that Elizabeth Moss and
Michael Gladis have good chemistry that allowed the early scenes to have an old
childhood friendship vibe to it. It just makes the scene where Kinsey and Peggy
kiss even the more devastating for Peggy as just when she thinks that she has a
common ally, it turns out he’s just one of the predators lurking around the office.
“Ladies Room” in all is a very good episode that begins to
show more and more the complexities of the lives of the people of whom the show
revolves around. It’s a good diversion from the largely plot establishing pilot
and seems more like an actual episode of Mad Men. The subtlety begins to creep
in (although there still are some overtly sixties in your face stuff here and
there) and the show settles into a character focused rhythm that will come to
define the series throughout both this season and the series entire run.
Some other musings;
- Bert Cooper!!! Yes big boss Cooper (well along with Roger) makes an appearance bare feet and all (which could be taken as a metaphor for something reveled much farther down the line but I won’t spoil that because well we’re still in the first season and well it’s probably not the case). It’s always great to see that Bert is around as Robert Morse is always really quirky and fun to watch.
- On the big boss note it’s funny to think that John Slattery has special guest star status here as I’m so used to him being a regular in the credits.
- Isn’t it a great sequence where Midge just throws the TV casually out the window? It’s a great moment of random yet kind of expected comedy.
- Notice that the fire escape is mentioned here when Midge locks herself out of the house. Don has to go through the fire escape to get into the house thus symbolizing that Midge is his escape from his domesticated life. Subtle but noticeable bit of symbolism there from Mr. Weiner.
- Another thing that is a little distracting is that it’s still really old Bobby Draper. He doesn’t get much to do throughout this season and thus gets recast a few times and throws me off a little here. Poor Bobby Draper…
Coming Up on Sunday: “The Marriage of Figaro” where Pete
returns and Birthday parties happen!
That’s just me though. Leave a comment to tell me what you
think.
Ok now on to a brief point for veterans only so Spoilers for
everyone who hasn’t watched the rest of Mad Men now! SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN
WARNED:
- Ok so those of us who have watched farther into the series know that Don doesn’t know how to handle Betty or their relationship because Don can’t handle complexity his relationships at all. As a woman would say in season 4 he only likes the beginnings of things. Thus the cheating on Betty and eventually Meghan down the line once she wore off her simplicity. It’s why Don’s so offended by the television (which to a first time viewer could be confusing) being in Midge’s house. It’s probably Don’s biggest relationship downfall and it’s shown quite nicely when in the most recent season he tries to keep power over his relationship with Sylvia.
- Ok the Bert thing. Yes I know this probably isn’t the case but could the first shot of Cooper’s bear feet represent the fact that he is free of women because he has no testicles? (which of course we find out in a great comedy moment in probably the show’s finest hour season 4’s “The Suitcase”) I laughed aloud as the possibility crept into my mind.
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