Everyone looking at Peggy's work on Mad Men
Photo Credit: AMC TV
It’s re-watch time again! Throughout the next few months we
will continue our look at Mad Men with its second season. Every Saturday It’ll
be a Season 2 episode in the hot seat ready for tons of discussion. Without
Further due let’s get right into the Mad Men Season 2 re-watch!
Some thoughts on Mad Men’s second Season premiere as soon as
I find a place to put this new copier…
“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my
personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”
-Mayakovsky from Meditations in an Emergency
So where were we? After a phenomenal debut season that has
gone down in the books it’s time to pick off right where we left off right? We’ll
get to see all the aftermath and consequences of all the big events that happened
at the end of season 1 right? Don having to stitch up the family, Peggy deal
with just giving up a child and the company with Duck should be main storylines
to start the season right…
…Not so much as in a bold move Mathew Weiner decides to skip
all of that in favor of a big time jump. Peggy is fine and back to work in her
new position as jr. copywriter, Don and Betty seem to be in a good place
marriage wise and Duck seems to have integrated well into the company so far
(although his conversations with Roger and Don are amusingly tense). Instead “For
those who Think Young” decides to reintroduce us back into this world at a more
manageable time, when things are a little more normal yet tension is festering
all over. Presumably we’ll get to what happened earlier later in the season
(spoiler alert for newbies we do get to it) but for now we’re establishing
newer and more important things for the future instead of picking up the pieces
of the past.
The most important thing established in business wise in the
premiere is the threat felt from the younger generation and the generation gap
of the 1960’s. Duck wants younger copywriters to help satisfy some client’s
needs for their ads to appear younger skewing. Of course this seems to hurt Don
whose either afraid of the younger generation taking over or non trusting in
anyone that’s not firmly under his wing. Throughout the episode Don is either talking
about how he doesn’t trust the younger generation or the show is showing why
Don doesn’t trust and at the same time feels threatened by the younger
generation. Don is beginning for one reason or another to feel the pressure,
something that he’s not comfortable with at this point in his career.
The other important idea established throughout the episode
is how skin deep each character’s happiness is. Don and Betty seem to be fine
at first, their relationship seems to be back to normal and Don is even taking
her out to a grand hotel for Valentine’s Day. It all seems great on the surface
but something is festering as Don can’t get up for sex, even when Betty is
trying her absolute hardest. Don on the surface loves Betty with all his heart,
but underneath there is something not there for Don. Same idea holds true for
Betty who seems to be stuck in a rut both life and personality wise. She seems fascinated
by the idea of her former friend being a call girl, trying to lift up and contemplate
both the life she’s chosen in comparison to the life path taken by her friend.
It all culminates into the wonderfully metaphorical car stall in which she
tries and succeeds in using some sexuality and charm to lure the Esso operative
to give in to her will and get her out of her rut.
Don and Betty aren’t the only ones in the only surface level
happy boat though. We get only a brief dose of Joan’s personal life in this one
but it seems that her relationship with Greg is happy on the surface (in her
wonderfully flirtatious back and forth with Roger she implies that they are
doing quite well) but in the brief glimpse that we get inside it seems that she’s
more interested in Jackie Kennedy then she is Greg. Pete and Trudy are having
baby troubles again and that continues to fester overtop of what seems to be,
so far, a happy looking marriage (Ps love the dramatic irony in the brief conversation
between Pete and Peggy in which he hints to her about his baby troubles, woops).
The final thing I want to touch on in the final mystery and
Meditations in an Emergency. First of all the whole motif of Meditations in an Emergency
could mean a few things, it could be Don’s attempt to connect with the young,
it could be Don just being stubborn and attempting to prove the guy in the bar
wrong about potentially not liking, but it could also have some other
implications particularly after the passage from the poem Mayakovsky is read at
the end of the episode. I think it could be a motif to represent where Don is
at this particular place in time, he’s stuck feeling a little older a little
detached from the life he’s living and the personality passage in Maykovsky and
the modern book in general tires to show this. The final thing is who the
mysterious person Don mailed the book to. It’s going to be interesting to see
the development of who Don’s communicating with and how the life of Don Draper
keeps on moving as this season progresses. (Some potential future spoilers for
newbies: Meditations in an Emergency does come up in various places throughout
the season so I’m going to keep an eye on how it ties in throughout the season
and grasp of what the motif/symbol’s ultimate use and meaning is as it was
something I never really paid attention to until I re-watched this episode)
Some other musings:
- Poor Paul Kinsey who doesn’t apparently count as young and useful at all at Sterling Cooper. (Although I did like him telling Peggy that she doesn’t count when she told him how young she was)
- If I had a problem with the episode it would be that the episode feels a little too obvious with its reintroductions to this world at times. Mathew Weiner has his small spots where he enjoys too much reminding the viewer that hey we’re in the 1960’s.
- That being said I did like the nod to critics and fans in the physical Don takes at the beginning, when the doctor asks Don how many boos and cigarettes does he consume.
- You can see the seeds of animosity between Don and Duck to form, they have a wonderfully tense conversation about needing the young people to come in. These are two egos that seem on a crash course and even at this point it seems that that crash is imminent.
Coming Up Next Saturday: “Flight 1” oh poor poor Pete…
That’s just me though. What did everyone else think?
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