Mad Men at the Movies: 'Adieu, Adieu, To You and You and You-ooo'

Previously on MM@M: 4.1 Live From Times Square 4.2 Sixties Sweethearts 4.3 Catherine Deneuve & Gamera, 4.4 Jean Seberg, 4.5 Hayley Mills & David McCallum, 4.6 Chaplin the Sad Clown 4.7 "No Bad Seats" 4.8 Peyton Place 4.9 "The Beautiful Girls"


In Mad Men at the Movies we investigate the cinematic references in the Emmy winning drama Mad Men. Though we accidentally took a one month hiatus from this series (due to a paucity of movie references) we shouldn't have. The series is mainly an excuse to talk about the show.  It's the best on television. In fact, I haven't loved a show as much as Mad Men since the heyday of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (circa 1998/1999)... inbetween those two titans only Battlestar Galactica and Once & Again got to me in similarly seismic ways. Which is to say, I love it madly. If I were to coincidentally receive an old engagement ring right before watching an episode, I would undoubtedly impulsively propose to it.

 "Mad Men, you make me very happy. Will you marry me?"

4.13 "Tomorrowland"
Season 4 has seen Don Draper (Jon Hamm) survive a tumultuous year filled with career highs intermingled with scary career scares but emotionally he's been hovering at the edge of the abyss for the entirety of 1965. In the season capper, he takes his kids to Disneyland (hence the title... and a sly one, too). He's already slept with his secretary Megan (Jessica Paré) in a previous episode but he invites her along as replacement babysitter since the ex Mrs. Draper has impulsively fired the children's life long nanny Carla. Don can't be expected to change diapers!

Though Don's sudden marriage proposal to Megan played like a shock -- I watched the episode at a party thrown by the Lipp Sisters and the room went audibly gaspy -- it shouldn't have; the whole season has been leading here.




Don has been flailing without a wife all season and, as Michael C at Serious Film brilliantly notes, Sally (Keirnan Shipka) already made the choice for Don in an incisive bit of foreshadowing in a previous episode.

Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono) may be exactly what Don needed as a human being but his very opening up to her spelled her doom; she got way too close to the real Don a.ka. Dick Whitman. "Don Draper," using the original Don Draper's engagement ring, is trying to reboot just like Betty did. This is not personal growth. His parts were fusing but there's safety in starting the charade all over again, marrying another woman he barely knows and who barely knows him and stealing Don's identity all over again albeit in miniature circular form. It's the circle of his life.

Not that Megan is a terrible choice per se. He seems genuinely moved and surprised that she's so warm and relaxed around the kids (the anti-Betty?) and he clearly needs a wife/maid/babysitter. The Sound of Music reference, when Megan teaches the kids a French song to sing to their daddy is pure bliss.

You said you had no experience but you're like Maria Von Trapp!

♪ A captain with seven children. What's so fe ♪ ♫ An admen with three children. What's so fearsome about that? I half expected Megan to bust out into song as she exited. "I Have Confidence" indeed. She's a sly one and I expect we'll get to know how sly when we return to her in 1966 or 1967... whenever Season 5 takes place.

The mammoth movie. The rich baron and his young bride.

The Sound of Music opened in 1965 (the year this season took place) and was an immediate sensation, becoming the highest grossing film of all time (at the time). What's extra fun about the reference is that it's a spoken reference to an actual movie scene so Don is being clever and self aware to a point. He knows he's the Captain Von Trapp of this mirror scene but he hasn't grasped that he's just hired this young girl to be his governess and he's fallen for her while ostensibly in a serious relationship with a older woman who isn't fond of children but who is unquestionably more of a social equal.

Sound familiar? We've got Captain Von Draper (a man who loves his children but has trouble being present with them), the singing Megan a la Maria (the children take to her and she, in turn, enjoys them and is in awe of their sophisticated rich important father) and Faye is... The Baroness. It might sound cruel to Faye -- and Don is -- but it's important to remember that The Baroness is not a villain even in The Sound of Music. She's just a little frosty and not naturally maternal. But in the end you have sympathy for The Baroness... or maybe for Eleanor Parker because she's a damn fine actress.

Season 4 ends not with the Von Trapp duet "Something Good" but with Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" over the closing credits. Cher & Sonny were divorced by 1975.

Best Moment: Joanie & Peggy's sympatico giggle at their shared career-woman persona.
Second Best Moment: Betty Vs. Carla. Wow, was that intense. Deborah Lacey has been a huge quiet assett to the show as thoroughly observant maid/nanny Carla. So sad that we're now losing her but this series is not for people who need their favorite shows to regurgitate the same episode for years on end. Mad Men has never been content to stay the same or reboot to repeat itself. It just keeps barrelling forward. "There is no fresh start! Lives carry on." Henry Francis shouts. He's a smart man.
Third Best Moment: Megan realizing she still needs to answer Don's phone, post-engagement.
Fourth Best Moment: "I hope you have all the happiness that Peggy and I had signing this account." -Ken Cosgrove you delight me. I am so glad they brought Mr Cosgrove back. He's such a great "light" counterpoint to all of the crazy masculine angst in SCDP. He's the only man who understands work/life balance and not every character in a drama should be hopelessly f***ed up.
Low Key Pitch Perfect Moment: Don & Betty & the bottle.
Season 4 RIPs: Alison, Carla, Miss Blankenship.
Season 5 Question Marks: Faye? Cooper? Francine?
Sympathy For The Devil: I know I'm alone in this but Betty Draper continues to be one of the most fascinating characters and January Jones continues to be a fearless actress in exploring her, totally unconcerned with being loved (the great bane of so many actresses in sculpting complex characters). Betty really can't help herself. She's miserable but continually perplexed by her own misery, unable to see her own culpability in it.

 Goodbye Ossining.

How was Season 4 for you? Any favorite moments, developments, new characters or disappointments?

MM@M: "The Beautiful Girls"

This week's episode of Mad Men "The Beautiful Girls" contained no movie references -- unless you count Faye calling Don "Mr Bond" (we think we heard that?) when he pried too much into her business with other ad agencies -- and a few celebrity name-droppings in a pitch meeting. What we did get is a lot of forward movement on Mad Men's quest to illustrate the 60s itself as a character. Vietnam is starting to scare these familiar faces and the burgeoning civil rights movement is starting to interfere with their perceptions of self.

Beautiful Girls: Joan, Peggy and Faye (Betty not pictured)

Mad Men probably won't win any new fans with that bad neighborhood mugging scene, since they've already been criticized in some quarters for the (mostly) all-white cast. But Mad Men's focus has always been a very specific type of people, ad men in midtown, and the show is doing a beautiful job of reflecting how people actually deal with change. I love Peggy's initial dismissal when confronted with racism "I'm not a political person!" and the way this bled into her own ideas about sexism and then to actual guilt about her culpability in working for racist organizations. This strikes me as an honest and realistic depiction of the way that people actually deal with change. Usually people respond to things based on how and when they affect them or their loved ones personally or they put off dealing with it at all until the social tide swings far enough towards a new way of thinking that they have no choice but to either jump on board or refuse the tide of progress and become ultra conservative. You can see this in the way straight people deal with the gay rights movements and you can see this in how native citizens deal with immigration issues in their own country, wherever that country may be.

Hopefully Mad Men will give us a movie to discuss soon... but this season is just on fire.

Further reading for Mad Men fanatics:

• all episodes of Mad Men at the Movies
• GIF - Sally Draper is the new boss of you
• Los Angeles Times interviews Cara Buono on playing Dr Faye Miller
  
• Times "Tuned In" on Peggy's women's rights march
• Movie|Line will Sally Draper get an Emmy nomination next year?
  
• p.s. i'm happy to take link suggestions for interesting articles if you have any in the comments.
  

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MM@M: Peyton Place (From Big Screen to Small)

Previously on Mad Men @ the Movies: 4.1 Live From Times Square 4.2 Sixties Sweethearts 4.3 Catherine Deneuve & Gamera, 4.4 Jean Seberg, 4.5 Hayley Mills & David McCallum, 4.6 Chaplin the Sad Clown 4.7 "No Bad Seats"

freelance creative Joey and name-dropping Harry discuss Peyton Place

Episode 4.8 "The Summer Man"
In yesterday's episode, Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Joan (Christina Hendricks) have a difficult showdown with Joey (Matt Long) the freelancer, another example of the show's study of sexism in the workplace. Joan turns on Peggy, despite Peggy's efforts to help. Joan is still in her downward spiral, less powerful in the office, helpless at home, and continually obsessing over Vietnam. Meanwhile, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) finally pulls himself out of his spiral. After last week's instant classic episode, which was very tightly focused, this was a rather uncharacteristic episode with prolonged narration from Don and a jumble of different scenes that felt like transitions away from old storylines.

<--- Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal in Peyton Place.

There were several cultural references in this episode such as Margaret Mead, Aesop's Fables, Life Magazine, Ray Charles but the closest we came to movies were two properties that had been or were to become movies. Broadway sensation The Odd Couple was cited with the classic "Are you an Oscar or a Felix?" question, but it would be another few years before that comedy transferred to the big screen. In another scene Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) tried to convince troublesome Joey to audition for a role opposite Ryan O'Neal on "Peyton Place" (1964) because he was so small screen handsome. Joey, unbeknownst to Harry, misinterpreted this as a gay come on.

Ryan O'Neal is a familiar name to anyone who lived through the 1970s when his fame was at its peak but in 1965 he hadn't yet made the jump from small to big screen. Peyton Place had just made the opposite journey. The original film adaptation of the novel (my review) was a Best Picture nominee in 1957 -- one of Oscar's most honored losers actually with 9 nominations and 0 wins -- but it became a series in 1964 catapulting both Ryan O'Neal and Mia Farrow into A List movie stardom once they moved on.

Clip. Mia is heavily featured. Ryan shows up until the 2:36 mark.

Have you seen either version?

The only connection that cropped up in my head with the movie version of Peyton Place and this episode is that Constance McKenzie (Lana Turner) is one (enjoyably) frosty bitch and Mad Men loves that type... though Betty softened beautifully in this episode just as Joan pulled her icy armor closer.
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MM@M: No Bad Seats

Mad Men @ The Movies discusses the cinematic references in television's best series.

Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Don (Jon Hamm) succumb to exhaustion.
Four seasons of great acting will knock the wind right out of you.

Episode 4.7 "The Suitcase"
This week's episode was a well timed Peggy & Don duet. The historic backdrop was the infamous boxing match between Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay (Clay had already changed his name to Muhammad Ali but not everyone had acclimated to the switch. Interesting that Don in particular shows resistance to it given his own name change/reinvention). Given that context and the episode's actual content it might be more appropriate to call "The Suitcase" a well timed Peggy & Don brawl. By the end of the episode they'd put each other through ten rounds, with an actual brawl (albeit with Peggy watching rather than throwing punches). We'll call it a draw. Shockingly, they both had a good cry before the hour was out, and seemed both more vulnerable to the viewing audience and to each other; it was a brutal episode but it wound down with surprising tenderness. The two characters have so often been used as imperfect parallels and generational / gender distorted reflections of each other that moments where they come head to head like this are nearly always memorable. And a whole episode of it? I can't help but say it: "The Suitcase" was a knockout.

But, for our purposes at MM@M, it was a rare episode without any movie star / movie name dropping. The closest we came was a James Bond reference and the opening shot/scene when Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) passes out tickets to see the big match... on the big screen.

Ken: Where are these exactly?
Harry: It's a movie theater -- no bad seats.

Those seats costs $15 which is quite a hefty price tag in 1965 (the hookers a few episodes ago cost $25). The SCDP team is seeing the match broadcast live at Loew's Capitol Theater in Times Square. The legendary theater once housed world premieres like Doctor Zhivago in 1965. After the last engagement in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the theater was demolished. Sadly movie theaters like that don't exist anywhere these days, really. It had over 5000 seats and a 25' by 60' screen.

As for Harry's assertion that movie theaters have no bad seats... do you agree? I'd beg to differ as I hate the front row. I'm a middle/middle man, though lately I've taken a liking to aisle/middle/right. But anything's fine really so long as it's not the front row!
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