So Glad to Meet You: Mad Men Season 2, Episode 5, The New Girl

Peggy is our new girl and this episode finally sheds some light on how she got from denying her pregnancy and her baby in a mental hospital back to moving up the ladder at Sterling-Cooper. Now I'd read a few predictions that Don must have had something to do with Peggy being able to have a three month leave from work, but I have to admit that when she walked into that Police station to bail him out, I was surprised! Watching Don struggle with who he could call made me a little sad for him, because he shows his real face to so few people, there's almost no one he can call when he needs help. But in walked Peggy, ready to pay his bail, shelter his mistress and forget the whole thing happened. Bobbie kept asking Peggy why she was doing all this, but even before they showed the flashback, the answer was clear. Don knew her biggest secret and kept it, so she would have no problem keeping his.


The flashback was an incredible piece of acting from Jon Hamm. Those intense eyes looking down at his protege, fully aware that she is at a crossroads. "Peggy listen to me. Get out of here and move forward. This never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened." In the last episode, I thought that show and it's writers were pushing Peggy as another Don, but now we know that it is actually Don who has created Peggy in his own image. He knows that you can build a life on lies, and he pushes his every problem so far out of his view that it no longer exists for him on the surface. And it isn't that he is unaware that the lying and fakery make him unhappy and unfeeling, it's that he knows that without it his life would be much much worse. He understands that Peggy giving up her child will scar her, but he is sure that the life she wants will be worth that scar, as it was for him.


His attraction to Bobbie makes more sense here as well, with her line "This is America, pick a job and become the person who does it." Even when standing next to Rachel, one of the only people Don felt comfortable with, Bobbie still compares favorably. She is a woman who crawled her way to the top and became who she needed to be to get there. Don is not unfamiliar with that idea. He is attracted to women who defy society, who have the strength to become what they want. Bobbie may be a bit obnoxious, but she uses what she has at her disposal to become successful, and that is something Don respects.



I liked the dynamic between Bobbie and Peggy, and I think Bobbie became a bit of the audience-proxy in those scenes, which also made her a bit more likeable. She wanted to know what Peggy was getting out of helping Don after their drunken car accident. What makes Peggy tick? It is a question that has a complicated answer, for sure. I also liked Bobbie giving Peggy a bit of advice. She can't be Don, because she's not a man. And maybe she can't exactly be Bobbie either, but she can use some tricks from both of them. I don't know if I can see Peggy using her femininity as a weapon in business, but I liked it when she called Don by his first name without even the tiniest stumble. Peggy does want "that corner office" and she is learning that being great at her job, even being an incredibly loyal employee aren't going to do it alone. I can't wait to see Peggy demand a little respect from her co-workers, as well as from her boss.

One interesting (possible) revelation that we learn in another of Peggy's flashbacks is that "the little one" may not be her child! Peggy's sister Anita was hugely pregnant when Peggy gave birth, and we have only seen one little boy around the house! I am not sure what that means for Pete and Peggy's little one, but it is something that I was really surprised by. I also thinks it casts Anita's confession from last week in a different light. I saw her as resentful that Peggy had cast off her child on her without any acknowledgement, but if her child is not in the picture, it makes Anita seem a little more nasty and bitter. So where is Peggy's baby? Given up for adoption? Could Anita's baby have died and she took Peggy's for a replacement? Could Peggy's baby have died? I am sure this information will be meted out slowly over the season.

Pete's storyline fell by the wayside for me, as it just reinforced things that we already know. Pete is fertile, Pete and his wife do not have a good relationship, and Pete is a jerk. I like Vincent Kartheiser a lot, but next to the main storyline, Pete's problems just didn't pull me in the way they have before.


For "B" plots, I liked the "Joan's engaged" storyline much better, mostly because of that great scene with Roger. (My love for Roger is already well documented!)
Christina Hendricks and John Slattery were great together, giving each other those sly little smiles during their talk about marriage. It reminded us that Roger could never be happy with one woman, not even Joan, and that he doesn't think anyone else with half a brain could be happy with just one person either. Joan is great, and I hope Roger's prediction that her marriage would mean the end of her career at Sterling-Cooper is wrong. I have a feeling that he may be right in his assumption that marriage isn't going to make her happy, and make actually make her feel restrained and yearning for freedom as it does him. On a shallow note, I am not loving Joan's hair this season! I thought it looked much prettier and less wig-like throughout Season 1.

The final scene brought us back to the Draper home, the dark heart of this show. After sharing the news of his high blood pressure with Betty (as a lie to make his drunk driving accident more palatable), she denies him salt to keep him healthy. Don gave her the same kind of look her gave her in "The Benefactor" when she got his watch engraved. Love tempered with guilt, and the feeling that all the forgetting he does makes him forget some really important things (not just Peggy's money!), the fact that he does love his family and they love him.

Awful Feels Softer: Mad Men Season 2, Episode 4,Three Sundays

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't seen this episode, you can find a recap here: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/mad_men/three_sundays.php

This is the episode where we learn that Don's facade may be cracking, and Peggy just might have him beat when it comes to emotional disconnection and compartmentalizing!

Peggy spends two of the three Sundays with her family, meeting a nice young priest (Colin Hanks) and using her advertising savvy to help him write a punchy sermon. We are definitely supposed to see that Peggy has a real talent when it comes to advertising, much in the same way that Don does. She knows when to play the tough broad, and when to be the sweet little girl "researching china patterns" and the like.

With the priest, she does seem to take some pains to let him know she isn't the devout worshiper that her mother and sister are, and he seems to enjoy talking to someone who isn't a complete sycophant. When her sister hears that Peggy helped him, she is visibly annoyed. I have to say, I wasn't sure about how to read the confession scene between the sister and the young priest. She may have gone there for the specific purpose of souring the pleasant relationship between he and her sister, but I can definitely understand her anger towards Peggy. There does seem to be some jealousy that Peggy gets to live her cosmopolitan lifestyle and "do whatever she wants", but I also feel like she had a point. There have been very few scenes this season where you would ever guess that Peggy had had a child, including times when her child was present.

When Father Gill gives her the Easter Egg "for the little one", he seems to be feeling exactly as I do about Peggy. He may have thought that he liked her, but knowing how she completely ignores her child makes him realize could never look at her in the same way again. With all of the parallels with Peggy and Don, I wonder if her knowing that her secret isn't exactly safe will change her cold and calculating ways. Last season, when Don found out that his secret was not as earth shattering as he feared it was, he began to realize the price he'd paid to keep it wasn't worth it. For, Peggy it seems, giving up a child she never even wanted was well worth it, as her career is advancing and her talent is being noticed. Right now, she is seems to be paying almost no emotional price it. It will be interesting to see how having her secret discovered by even one person will change her.

As usual, it was Don and Betty who were the most compelling for me in this episode. They were pretty cute together in the early scenes, cuddling in bed and dancing in the living room. But issues with Bobby (who Mommy does not seem to like!) come between them rather quickly. They each take the opposite sides than you might expect from the outside. Betty seems to truly believe that hitting Bobby is the only answer for his naughty ways, and pushes Don into action. After throwing Bobby's toy at the wall and having a shoving match with Betty, Don confides in both Bobby and Betty about his abusive father. It is nice to see Don attempting to form the kind of real connection he has been missing with his family. (Even as he succumbs to the questionable charms of Bobbie Barrett again.) However, there were more than a few scenes where I just found Betty to be horrid, so sometimes I am with Don in wishing he had a smarter, better, more understanding wife! (Not that I am trying to excuse his cheating or general sexist attitude, it's just with quotes like "Do you think you'd be the man you are today if your father didn't hit you?!" she comes off as more clueless and mean-spirited than ever!) Betty and Don continue to navigate their relationship, and it seems like they are both just discovering that the person they married is (sometimes literally) not the person each of them thought.

Over in work-land, Duck's contact with American Airlines is fired, so Pete's willingness to whore out his own father's death is for nought. Duck doesn't get the dressing down that we (and Don) might have hoped for, but he does show himself to be a bit nice than we might have thought a few times during the day. But before they learn that bit of disappointing news, everyone at Sterling-Cooper comes in on a Sunday, and it is fun to see the casual fashion they are sporting. We hear a little jealousy from Joan about Peggy "making more than any of us" and get to see Sally in her father's office for the first time, making comments about Joan's breasts and getting drunk on some one's rye! I don't think Betty would like that if she knew!

We get a glimpse of my beloved Roger, paying for it with a pretty escort that Pete and Ken brought in for a client (lovely). Both he and Don seem to be paying for sex one way or another, as Don's dalliances with Bobbie seem to be power plays on both parts. Roger does mention his health, so maybe he is just making sure he can still keep up with the ladies once he goes after them! We also see him with his family (his wife his played by his real-life wife, Talia Balsam, who was also once married to George Clooney. Lucky girl, I have to say!) which I liked. His daughter is engaged and resisting a big wedding, and his poor wife goes on and on about the beauty of her wedding day in heartbreaking little monologue that the daughter seems to be pretty sure is all BS. And of course we get his quote on his love of the chase " "Don't you love the chase? Sometimes it doesn't work out. Those are the stakes. But when it does work out, it's like having that first cigarette." He was talking about advertising, but oh, his poor wife.

So many thwarted goals, so many unmet expectations. A much better episode than the preceding one, and some tantalizing previews for next week!

I No Longer Hear the Music: Mad Men, Season 2, Episode 3, The Benefactor

SPOILER ALERT- If you haven't seen this episode yet, you can find a recap here:
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/mad_men/the_benefactor.php#more

The word that came to my mind while watching this episode of Mad Men was fragmented. I think it could apply to the episode itself, which was the weakest of this season so far, but it can also apply to the characters minds and lives. We see another side of both Don and Betty this week. They both seem unsatisfied and uncomfortable in their own skins, reaching outward to figure out what it is that is going on inside.

After being a bit harsh for the first couple of episodes, Betty seems a little softer this week. Though when she asks Don, "Is this kind of dinner where I don't talk, or the kind where I talk?", she betrayed a bit of that edge in her voice. But after she charmed Jimmy at dinner, her tears in the car seemed to be about both what she said they were- happy tears at the way she and her husband worked together- as well as an unspoken acknowledgment that what her admirer sees inside her is true...she is profoundly sad.
That scene in the stables by the way was awkward and hard to watch for me. Arthur telling Betty he could see the sadness in her seemed a bit too obvious, but it may be that his character is a bit lame, not that the scene was. I am still not sure if it was purposeful, but that was definitely one of the most stiff, mannered scenes I have seen on this show.

There was also a change in Don in the first two episodes of the season, and though he is not back to his old stone self just yet, we did see him sliding into some old habits. He is called upon to fix it when the talent, Jimmy Barrett (based on Jerry Lewis or Don Rickles perhaps?) offends the clients he is working for. He ends up sleeping with talent's wife/manager, and after his conquest, he seems more potent in every way. Jon Hamm did a great job in the scene where he comes home after his encounter with Bobbi Barrett, washing his hands and mouth before he can even look at Betty. Also, he really conveyed such guilt when she gave him his watch that she had monogrammed for him.

At a dinner arranged to coax an apology out of Jimmy, Don shows who's boss when he grabs Bobbi by the hair, sticks his hand up her skirt, and with what can only be called sexy menace, hisses to her make her husband say sorry or "I'll ruin him". He means it, and she knows it. It is an interesting little turn for Don, who seems to have tired of being Betty's good little husband and Roger's clean-up man already.

Don and Betty seem to be circling around each other, trying to figure out how to bring back something they have lost. Both of them are trying on different personas, and seem to be struggling with how to make one another happy, but even more so, how to find happiness for themselves.

The other story lines seem to be set-ups for something in the future-Harry takes a risk and becomes "Head of Television", Lois gets fired and Joan takes her place temporarily, Betty rebuffs the advances of Arthur, but her hand shaking returns. No Peggy or Pete this week, but the previews promise to remedy that. This episode was certainly still more compelling than 90% of what is on TV, but it just didn't feel as together to me as most hours of Mad Men do. Hopefully the magic will be back next week!

One more thought:
The controversy over the The Defender's episode portrayed here was real, like the crash of AA Flight 1 last week. An advertiser did end up sponsoring the abortion themed show at the last minute, and it turned out positively for all involved. I love the period details of the show and how they use these smaller moments in history to illuminate the characters and the times.

Turn and Face the Strain: Mad Men Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2, For Those Who Think Young, Flight 1

SPOILER ALERT-If you haven't seen these episodes, and you want to read this anyway, you can find some recaps here: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/mad_men/flight_1.php
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/mad_men/for_those_who_think_young.php

So what has changed, and what has stayed the same? At first, there doesn't seem to be much change from 1960 to 1962. Sterling-Cooper is still the same boys club, Peggy is still busting her ass and not being looked at as anywhere near equal to the men, Don and Betty are still miserable and Pete is still a slimeball. But in both of these episodes, you can see that though the changes in the characters may seem subtle on the surface, they are in fact radical.

Jon Hamm is a great actor, and I think that he has done a terrific job projecting the changes in Don Draper's personality just slightly. In the first season his face looked as if it was almost carved out of stone, an almost inhuman facade of coolness. This season, after the indignities of being exposed to his boss as a fraud and learning that his brother committed suicide because of his rejection, he holds himself just a little differently. He's feeling his age, and feeling the weight of losing Rachel and so many other things he has wanted. His face is a little softer, his eyes a little haunted and wanting. It is just subtle enough that you completely buy that his wife and co-workers have no idea.

Betty, on the other hand is changing in a way that Don can see. She is much more assertive, whether ordering room service or telling Don her opinions. Her strange interest in her friend's life as a high class call girl in the first episode makes her desire to be wanted palpable. In "Flight 1", it is clear that she has become hard, abrasive and even a little mean. Living with Don and his inability to express emotion, being cheated on, taken for granted and ignored have taken their toll on the once sweet Betty. January Jones does a great job portraying someone who is constantly trying to keep up her happy act, but cannot help letting the mask slip once in awhile. In both episodes she is particularly critical of her children, which is of course ironic as one of the main reasons Don married her is that he believed she would be a sweet and loving mother. So they are still miserable, but for slightly different reasons!

Peggy's most obvious change is on the outside, as she has lost all of that extra (baby) weight she was carrying last season. Now she is of course carrying this weight metaphorically, and she seems to be reminding herself that her career is worth it. In "For Those Who Think Young", her pain just barely registers when Pete asks her if she ever wants children (already had yours, bucko!), and when she is forced to hold her child in "Flight 1", you can see there may not be a maternal bone in her body.

Pete is still Pete, but I have to admit, that after he found out his father had perished in the American Airlines plane crash in "Flight 1", I actually felt a bit of sympathy for him. He didn't know how to react to the death of someone he didn't particularly like and he was supposed to love. His flailing leads him to Don's office of all places, where Don does his best to comfort him in his own Don-like robot man way. "Go home. That's what people do." Pete is looking for a new Daddy ASAP, and a nicer one preferably. But business leads Don to bite his head off a few scenes later and Pete ends up looking to Duck, who had distastefully asked him to help land American Airlines as a client. Though he initially refuses to help him, after Don's rejection of him sends him straight into Duck's phony emotional comfort and to pimping out his father's death to get a client. I think Duck and Pete are going to end up being formidable business foes for Don, possibly even making Don wish he had given Pete the job instead of hiring Duck.

I have to mention the Paul/Joan altercation here!

Joans reaction to Paul having an African-American girlfriend was

mean but rather on point about Paul and his pseudo-bohemian ways. I have to say though, it made me glad to be a 21st century gal when I saw that all it took to humiliate Joan was for the office

to learn that she was over 30. (And still single! gasp!)

The gender politics on this show are mind boggling, though

unfortunately not as far fetched as it should be. Women

are still shamed for being single when they reach a certain age today,but at least it wouldn't qualify as someone's darkest secret!

I also must mention how happy I was to see Roger out and about in episode 2! John Slattery is so great as the almost-lovable rouge, I was really hoping he would make it to the other side of his heart attack in decent health. He certainly hasn't slowed down his drinking or smoking much!

I am really interested to see some of threads we were introduced to in these two episodes play out over this season. Peggy's mother, sister and baby, Betty's transformation from fragile victim to subtle victimizer (and back to to victim again? If she keeps acting as though she'd be willing to trade, ahem, "favors" for car parts then that might just happen.). Don struggling with his age, his wife, his identity and his work. Pete and Duck aligning against Don. Joan's vulnerabilities starting to show and all of the intrigue at Sterling-Cooper. I am excited to see what's coming next!

Heart Cooks Brain: Doctor Who Season 4 Finale, Journey's End

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen the episode, but you still want to read this (Which I'm telling you, you do.) you can find a synopsis here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey%27s_End_%28Doctor_Who%29

Now I know that it is strange to start with the last episode of the fourth season of a show, but I have to admit, it was this episode that inspired me to start writing about television. I could not stop thinking about it after I watched it last night, and woke up this morning with the same burning in my chest as I had watching it. It usually makes sense to start at the beginning, but like Donna, it has been burned from my mind, leaving only the devastating ending.

She lost all of her memories of the Doctor, and of who she had become with him!

To be given such a gift and have it ripped away from you, and to give someone so much and have to take it away, it just killed me to watch it. Donna begging the doctor "Please don't make me go back" as he wipes away any memory of him, of saving the universe, of being "Doctor-Donna", of being better than she ever thought she could be. I never thought that any ending could be sadder than Rose and the Doctor's incredibly painful separation in "Doomsday", but this one was even worse. Rose was left with her amazing memories, and the knowledge that the Doctor loves her. Donna had none of that, and her begging the Doctor just before he wipes her mind made me wonder what she would have chosen for herself. Life, and never knowing the Doctor or her own importance, or the certain death that having a Time-Lord's mind would bring her. Rose and the Doctor's ending made me sob, but his goodbye with Donna has definitely stayed with me in a different way. When he said all of his other goodbyes to his "Children of Time", it was clear that for each one, their time with him had changed their lives for the better, and helped them actualize as human beings. Even as he credits Rose for making him better, it seems clear that Davros' assertion that he has made them worse, turned them into weapons, could not be more wrong. Donna losing the knowledge of who she could be is what really kills me here. I almost think she would have rather died as the Doctor's companion than lived as "just a temp", as someone who truly believes that she is "nothing special".

Wait, did other things happen in this episode? I think I remember that there were other people besides Donna in this one...oh wait, EVERYBODY was in it! The beginning was cute, all "Oh no, everyone is in peril! OH MY GOD... they're fine, it's cool". I was incredibly excited to see Mickey and Jackie teleport in to save Sarah Jane, a little bummed that all Gwen and Ianto got to do was sit around and be useless (timelock!) and glad we didn't get a true regeneration from the Doctor. I NEEDED to see he and Rose hug it out as soon as possible. The plot was invariably messy, but Davros' desire to destroy reality by destroying every atom in the universe was suitably bone chilling for me. As usual, the plot wasn't really the point, so I won't belabor all of the hows and whys of it. I liked the little twist at the end of Dalek Caan conspiring to destroy his own race, and pointing out that the Doctor will "kill" Donna by taking away her memories of him. It was a roller coaster of emotions, from the jubilation of seeing Sarah Jane, Captain Jack, Rose, Martha, Donna, Mickey, and TWO Doctors flying the earth home in the TARDIS, to the double whammy of Rose's and Donna's goodbyes.

Speaking of Rose's goodbye, this is where it gets a bit tricky for me. It was almost washed away by the utter hopelessness of Donna's send off, but moving that aside, I cannot decide what to think about it. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for the way Billie Piper and David Tennant make those big, loving eyes at each other, and even though she annoys me sometimes, I have always bought the love between the Doctor and Rose. (I think it was actually just as apparent and beautiful with Nine, and I was longing for just a glimpse of Christopher Eccleston in this "kitchen sink" episode.) When the "other Doctor" told Rose that he could spend his one life with her, I got a little choked up. But like Rose, I still cannot quite get my head around the idea that they are the same. "He's me, I'm him." And the knowledge that the "proper Doctor" loves her and has to leave, while his human counterpart gets to grow old with her is just a little kick in the teeth for me. Not to say that seeing Piper and Tennant kiss passionately wasn't pretty satisfying,
I'm just not sure how to feel about that particular development, or
even how I'm supposed to feel about it. Sorry for the Doctor? Happy for Rose? Happy that at least one version of the the Doctor, with his memories and mind, gets to be with her? Sad that Rose gets an imitation instead of the real thing? I really liked the "Two Doctors" conceit, and felt that having the Doctor watch himself commit genocide against the Daleks once again had great emotional resonance. It also gave us the fun and cuteness of having TWO David Tennants on screen at once. I'm just not sure if I liked the way they resolved the two Doctors issue, or the Rose and Doctor love issue.

I really liked to the goodbyes that everyone else got, kind of a "goodnight, not goodbye" kind of a thing. It really emphasized the feeling that these people are bonded together, and they will see each other again. Watching them on the TARDIS they felt like a family, and I hope that is something touched upon in future seasons. Though I do like the idea of the Doctor as a lonely god, knowing he has these incredible people out there to count on makes me feel better, and I think they should affect the character and make him feel better too! I like Sarah Jane's line "You act like the loneliest man in the universe, but you have the biggest family in the world!" She is clearly talking about his role as Earth's caretaker there, but she was also acknowledging that Davros wasn't far off when he called them the Doctor's "Children of Time".

All in all, I think that "Journey's End" was a fitting send off for both Catherine Tate as Donna and Russell T. Davis as showrunner. It was a lovely goodbye, even though it was also soul-crushingly depressing. I think as a writer, that is clearly what Davies was going for. I was really happy to see all my old friends from all four seasons (I do miss you, Christopher Eccleston!), but I think that even without geeking out over that, It was still a well-written and performed piece of television. I think that a non-fan would definitely enjoy it, so if you are one of those people, catch it on repeats, come over to my house and watch my DVR, or go to YouTube and watch it. You won't regret it.