Having painted himself into a corner—with Betty about to run off with Henry Francis; Peggy weighing offers from Duck; and Pete on the verge of leaving for another company—Matthew Weiner resorted to a time-honored tradition: He gathered the best characters in a room and had them take the show in a new direction.
So that’s how Joan comes back. Pity about Ken Cosgrove. I’m confident we haven’t seen the last of Sal, though the circumstances under which he’ll return are a mystery. And if there was any remaining doubt that it was okay to like Lane Pryce, let’s lay it to rest.
It's tea time at Sterling Cooper.
Mad Men carried off its third season finale in high style, opening plenty of new avenues while spinning a suspenseful story—the escape from Sterling Cooper—with tension, poignancy and plenty of good humor. (The lone comment on the last week’s Kennedy assassination episode was Roger making fun of Jane: “Most interest that girl’s ever had in a book depository.”) The final installment of the season also illuminated Don’s feelings by creating a parallel with his youth, when his father made the self-preserving decision to abandon a struggling farm collective. His dad’s accidental death turns out to have been from a horse’s kick, which gives extra resonance to the horse meat motif from a few weeks ago. But more to the point: Don/Dick saw as a young boy what it means to strike out on one’s own; if his secret past can ruin his marriage, maybe the values he took from it can save him professionally. He also bails from his sinking ship in a more collaborative way than his father did.
Jumping the gun a bit, aren’t you, Matthew Weiner? Watching “The Grown-Ups,” the first Mad Men episode directed by Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune, Murder by Numbers), it’s actually pretty clear why the show didn’t save the Kennedy assassination for its season finale. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended season two and which provided a suitably paranoid backdrop for an episode of secret-spilling, with the Kennedy assassination, you’re essentially limited to having an entire episode of characters glued to their television sets (or in the case of Roger’s daughter’s wedding guests, reluctantly unglued). There are certain marks to hit—the announcement of Kennedy’s death, Ruby shooting Oswald—and since nothing else is going on in the world, it’s not exactly the best week for advancing the series’ drama. Yet it would be weird not to address it at all. Good on Weiner for getting it out of the way and—we hope—saving the season’s biggest fireworks for next week.
This post contains mega-spoilers. Avoid—avoid!—if you haven’t seen this killer episode.
It was hard to ignore complaints that the new season of Mad Men had been moving too slowly, and with a title like “The Arrangements,” this week’s episode almost sounded like a sly joke—a signal that more groundwork was about to be laid. The surprise is that “The Arrangements” actually provides closure on several fronts (spoilers ahead!), notably with Peggy getting vindication on Patio (beautifully relayed in a single glance she shares with Don) and, of course, with the death of Grandpa Gene.
Mad Men episodes don’t always have internal symmetry, but this one is beautifully structured. Not only does it begin with Gene giving orders to Sally and end with Don folding up Gene’s bed (to the tune of the old rallying cry “Over There,” first written during World War I), but the theme throughout is parents’ failed plans for their children. Gene tries to discuss his death with Betty, who doesn’t want to hear about it; knowing that resistance is pointless, Horace Cook resigns himself to his son’s boneheaded decision to invest in jai alai. In a different kind of situation, Peggy makes the entirely rational choice to slight her mother and move to Manhattan. Hovering over it all is Don’s own past—and the unspoken absence of his parents.
I was once a patient boy when it came to home entertainment. An old roommate of mine, a film geek, once remarked that I rented only the slowest, most boring foreign films ever made—and he had a point. My tolerance for nothing happening was high. So I’m probably not the first to find season 3 of Mad Men a bit too slice-of-life. If it follows the pattern set by last season, perhaps the “action” will come tumbling out later—but in the meantime, I can’t imagine Mad Men reeling in the new fans with the atmospheric excursions we took last night. Things are creaking along. “My Old Kentucky Home,” as much as I could glean, was about a generation gap exposed in both the Bacardi creative team’s pot-smoking session, Roger Sterling’s performance in blackface at his Derby garden party (notice the younger folks grimacing) and perhaps even in Joan Hollaway’s dinner party—as she wonders if she wants to be Mrs. Dr. Greg Harris. The missing five dollar bill storyline ramped up the elderly Gene’s ominous presence in the Draper’s household and built some suspense—as did the frayed relationships of the principal couples. Last night’s small but important moment was the exchange between Draper and Sterling—Roger called out Don for his resentment of his “happiness” while Draper let his sometime father-figure know he and others found him foolish. It felt like a sign-of-the-times role reversal where Draper was standing on tradition and Sterling was giddily leaving it behind. That small rift could signal a bigger break to come. But besides Betty letting a man feel her pregnant belly and a fine Charleston from Pete and Trudy, the garden party offered few revelations. One small drummer’s note—I’ve read blogs griping that the garden party band’s drum set and cymbals were too modern for the era—if this is true it qualifies as an unfortunate slip-up for Matthew Weiner’s otherwise accurate styling.
