Sorry about missing the last two eps! I am hoping to get to them at some point, but I figured I would do this week's episode relatively on time while I still had the chance. (I was sick, in a wedding, went to NYC...excuses excuses...)I love to be able to agree with Roger, and when he told Don in the last episode that he was in over his head, he couldn't have been more right.
Don is getting sloppy, in his personal life and his work life. Last season, everything he touched was gold, and he seemed to have a preternatural ability to know what people wanted to hear and how to handle almost everyone. This season, Don is lost about how to deal with Hilton, too preoccupied with his own need for Hilton's approval to understand how to deal with this kind of eccentric. Now that he is tied to his work life by a contract and his home life by an infant, you can see him chafing. By hiding the $5,000 signing bonus in his 'secret drawer', he is letting himself believe, just the tiniest bit, that he could run if he wanted to.
But deep down he knows he can't run. And he's getting reckless. The affair with the teacher seems to be doomed from the start, with both of them running wild eyed at each other. He wants her, and that makes this affair a little more dangerous than the ones we've seen before. Bobbi, Rachel, Midge...these women wanted him first, and were clear about it. Ms. Farrell played just that little bit hard to get and drew him in, and now he seems hooked, despite her off kilter behavior. The first scene between them revealed something kind of interesting about Don that I don't think we've seen too much of before. Even though he seems so intelligent, so worldly most of the time, he was so easily drawn into her silly, stoner questions about the color of blue, spinning it into the beautiful Don Draper prose in no time. "People may see things differently, but they don't really want to." Don sees the shallow, silly conversation with Ms. Farrell as one with some kind of depth, even though, as my friend Eric put it "She gets her wisdom from 8 year olds." There is something about her that is fascinating to him, and maybe it just the answer to the question he asked her in last week's ep..."Who are you?"
Don's old tricks aren't working at work, and they aren't working at home either. The baby's cries interrupt him and cause him to leave the key to his drawer of secre
ts (one should not have those!) where Betty can find it. I love the scene where Betty finds the box, trying desperately to use these items to put together some of the mystery of the man she is married to. As she waits for him to come home and face her confrontation, she loses more and more of her will to fight him, to stand for the lies he will surely tell to cover all this. So she becomes "pretty mommy", his radiant wife, and watches him lap up all the praise at the Sterling-Cooper 40th. He is happy, or at least he looks happy, and Betty sees the chance to know him slipping away, replaced, for now, with the chance to be him. To look as if you are someone entirely different than who you are on the inside, to have all the money, all the praise, to have everything. For all of the other characters on the show, Don is the person want to be. He has it all, and it seems to come so easy to him. He hides his deep unhappiness so well, and only shows the world, even his wife, his attractive facade.Other thoughts:
Paul vs. Peggy: I think Paul realized that Peggy is incredibly talented at what she does, and unfortunately for him, far more talented than he is. He is a man with a big ego, but maybe he will try to learn from her instead of trying to take her down...we'll see how smart he is.
Don and Ms. Farrell's brother: Shades of his own brother, Adam? "I swore to myself I'd do this right once." Of course he sympathized with the kid's need to run away. "It seems bad now, but you can still change things." Does Don think this is still true?
Roger's mother thinking Jane was his daughter, Margaret was great. "Does Mona know?" Jane seemed so annoyed.
Bert Cooper looked so fragile in this episode! I loved the exchange between he and Layne- "Who told you I was vain?"
Even after the Brits decide to sell the company he has worked so hard to improve and his wife makes fun of his utter devotion to his bosses, Layne still does their bidding and gets Bert Cooper to the party. A company man for life?
How does Lois still have a job?! She cut a man's foot off drunkenly driving a lawnmower!
Next week:
Joan! Yay!
Only three episodes, left, so I better see more Sal soon!
1 comment:
All I can say is... that teacher is crazy bad news. She is obviously the one who called the house, and then she stalked him on the train. And that whole weird scene where she talks about how she doesn't care about his job or his marriage... Um, lady you should care about those things! And introducing Don to her brother was a weird move. Generally, people conducting affairs try to keep them secret from everyone, you know to avoid those awkward moments in the grocery store or whatever. Don doesn't seem to notice that she is unstable, and I suspect that in the future, she is going to her darnedest to destabilize his world. He is all about juggling the deceptions. Betty is angry when he calls and tells her to get ready for the big party. She demands to know where he was the night before, and he says "I was Hilton..." and she calms down just a little bit, and says "Oh, I must have forgotten" but she's still mad about the whole thinking he used to have a wife, and the part where he stashes wads of cash in his desk.
It's funny that Don would ask someone else "Who are you?" "Who the hell are YOU Don!" He can't keep up with it all forever, it will come crashing down around him. It takes a big ego to tell so many lies, but that ego will be his down fall!
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