Monday, June 4, 2012

Mad Men Season Five - Transitions


Midway through Season 4, as Don was swimming laps to clear his head - of the booze, the women, the death of his beloved faux-wife Anna, he addressed the audience in voice over, he wanted to "wake up" from the torpor he had been in.  Deep into Season 5, long past the expiration date on the "love vacation" Bert Cooper tagged him as being on, Don started to wake up.  Perhaps it was Peggy leaving, or discovering that Lane had embezzled money, but the penultimate episode of this season's Mad Men saw Don asserting himself in the office and at home in ways we have not seen since the season began.  

The frame for Commissions and Fees will surely be Lane Pryce's suicide and, to a lesser extent, Sally's half-hearted attempt at transitioning to womanhood, only to have her plans foiled by experiencing her first period while on an awkward non-date with Glenn Bishop at a local museum, but it was Don's assertiveness in attempting to secure Dow Chemical as a client that stood out to me. This Don Draper was not kowtowing to executives, as he did early this season with Heinz, or engaging in sophomoric bait and switch pitching as he did with Sno-Cone, or campy dialogue for Cool-Whip, no, this Don Draper was a swinging dick walking into the lion's den of an executive who thought he was untrustworthy, well briefed on the product, unwilling to take no for an answer and totally in control.  "You want me to wipe the blood off your face," asks Roger after they walk out of the meeting, and indeed, Don fed, and well, on the stunned Dow executives, who made him wait nearly two hours and then were prepared to cut him down to nothing.

Of course, Don's true awakening occurred when he discovered Lane had forged his name on a company check and then embezzled money to cover his tax burden.  Don was firm, in a way that reminded me of his reprehensible behavior toward Sal in Season 3, but here, fully justified - Lane must go, no questions asked, no explanation allowed.  That Lane would ultimately commit suicide seemed predictable from the unrelenting theme of death and mayhem that defined the earlier part of the season.  That he was unable to accomplish the feat through carbon monoxide poisoning because of the unreliability of his Jaguar was flirting with gallows humor in a way some may have found objectionable, but the sick pallor of his hanging corpse was, for me at least, a far more offensive image. 

Others will no doubt shed ink delving into the deeper root of Lane's choice, but to me, it does not require meaningful examination.  Lane was shamed, saw no future in England and took what he thought was the honorable (or logical?) choice.  Of course, it did not have to be that way.  In the meeting where Don fires him, Don told Lane "I've started over plenty of times, this is the worst part"; something that could have applied to several low periods of Don's life - Anna's discovery of his chicanery, Betty's discovery of his secret past, his divorce, Anna's death, and others along the way, but Don is a survivor, and in his firing of Lane he was trying to express that it was not the end of the world. Perhaps it's his Depression-era upbringing or his gnawing fear of being exposed as someone he is not, but Don would never make the choice Lane made. Not only that, but Don's decency (yes there is some of that), was shown in his offer to "cover" Lane's crime. Unable or unwilling to contemplate a future back home, Lane decided there was no future at all.

The future was also on young Sally's mind. In the past few months, Sally's had a lot of information thrown her way - she's discovered daddy had a first wife, that grandma takes happy pills to go to sleep when serial killers are on the loose, that other men's wives bob their heads up and down in Uncle Roger's lap at parties and coffee tastes that much better with sugar in it.  But tonight, she attempted to gain some ownership of her burgeoning womanhood but got a rude awakening instead. When she has a few hours alone in the city, she gets her long-distance crush Glenn to hop a train to come visit.  Their "date" at the local museum is stilted and awkward, and Sally's upset stomach turns out not to be nerves but her first menstrual cycle. Embarrassed, or perhaps unsure what to do, she sneaks out of the museum and hops a cab back to Rye, where a surprised Betty is greeted with a hug and need for comfort (two things she clearly is unaccustomed to giving or receiving from her daughter). 

Sally's incident allows Betty to twist the knife into Megan when she calls to let Megan know Sally has turned up at home. Betty was in high dungeon all episode, her weight loss has sharpened her tongue as she dinged Megan as Don's "child bride" and did not tolerate any of Sally's shenanigans when she whined about going on a ski vacation, dumping her, on short notice, at Don and Megan's door. It's unlikely that this random act of kindness will change Betty's relationship with her daughter, after all, if she ever finds out Sally had kept in touch with Glenn, much less met him, unchaperoned in New York City, Sally is likely to be grounded until Nixon is sworn into office. But for one day at least, Betty can feel self-satisfied in the little Judy Blume, Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret moment of explaining the joys of menstruation to her daughter and how it means she is now a woman. Betty Francis, mother of the year.

And so, we stand on the edge of the end of another season.  The show's writers have amped up the story telling in recent weeks and each scene feels dangerous and uncertain- when Roger and Don discuss going after Dow, Ken's unwillingness to help causes Don to muse that they should just fire him if it means the agency has a better shot at the business.  Sally disappears from the museum and goes missing and a former copywriter has thrown it all away in search of religious meaning.  Lane kills himself and Peggy quits, all in the span of a few short (show) weeks. Everything seems to be on the table and no one is safe. The "little agency" that 18 months ago lost its biggest client is now swinging for the fences. Joan Harris, even before Lane's demise, is eagerly casting ballots as a partner and her role will only increase, Roger and Don are in sync in ways that we have not seen since they were bringing twins back up to their offices for an after hours romp and even Bert Cooper is engaged in the agency's work.  In a season that has leaned heavily on atmospherics and mood, the brass tacks of character movement and development are in full bloom as we anxiously await where they (and we) will go. 

15 comments:

  1. After listing everything that's happened in these last few episodes, it definitely feels like the show is ramping up more for the finale. It's strange because Mad Men doesn't really deal in cliffhangers, but there is a palpable sense of uncertainty (for us, it's primarily about the fate of Peggy and Elisabeth Moss on the show).

    RIP Lane. Loved Jared Harris and sad he's gone, even if the show handled it well.

    Our take: http://wp.me/p1VQBq-ZP

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    1. Thanks for reading my blog - love your site name! I have a hard time believing Peggy will not be woven back into the story, if not at the end of this season, then sometime next - my guess is that Chaough will be unworthy of her (if you'll recall, Ted C. hired "Smitty" after SC was taken over by McCann and treated him like shit). As for the cliffhanger element, I agree, it's not so much cliffhangers they do as an open ended "what if." It should be interesting, either way. Thanks again for checking out my site.

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  2. Another great recap! My comment, is that I agree with John over @ Slate.com... what was Don's real motivation a the Dow meeting? The conservative suits on the room have been prepped that Don is a loose cannon. Would his take-no-prisoners speech really go over with that crowd or was something else afoot here? Was this Don simply nuking Ken's father-in-law for his comment at the dinner several episodes ago as part of the "Don's back" plan??

    BTW, it's sad to see Jared Harris go... he's a fine actor and I thought that the character added a nice element to the show. :(

    Phil

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    1. My best guess is that Don found the whole Joan-whores-herself-out-for-a-partnership-over-a-piece-of-shit-car-company aspect of what the firm had become distasteful and wants to swing for the fences. I like it when Roger and Don are working together - best chemistry for them since the Season 3 finale when they did their "Oceans 11" routine of rounding up the troops for the coup d'etat.

      Agreed about Lane's character - he totally grew on me.

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  3. Lane's suicide brought tears to my eyes. It was awful to see him hanging on the door like that. Guess this means Pete will live to see another day...

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    1. Bracing and disturbing. Yes, looks like we'll have Pete Campbell to kick around for a while, but who knows? It seems like anything could happen.

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  4. I love Mad Men, but this is second time in two weeks an episode has left me teary eyed. At this rate, I might be curled up in a fetal position by next week's finale.

    Some folks over at Vulture say Lane's suicide was rushed, but to me it wasn't...true the embezzlement angle did come up out of nowhere, but his depression/implosion where a long-time coming. He was always tightly wound/stressed out, his father beat him and ordered him to go back to his verbally abusive wife, and Putnam Low ordered him around to different branches like a dog.

    Then when he finally gathers up the nerve to break away, do his own thing and help found SCDP, he is treated like an annoying afterthought by the other partners (Pete) and his attempts to break out the box (i.e. handle the Jaguar account) were shut down. There was no area of his life where he was a self-actualized human being with his own thoughts and desires. True, his pride did get in the way--he could've asked for help--but pride wasn't the only thing that caused his fall.

    Check out my recap:

    http://kclarkscorner.blogspot.com/2012/06/mad-men-season-5-ep-12-commissions-and.html

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    1. Good summation of why Lane felt so despondent. "There there Lane ... you'll do what you always do, make yourself indispensable" was what the PPL people told him when he found out PPL was being sold to McCann and the PPL partners were cashing out. He always felt like his role was not properly respected. Sad. I'll check out your recap too and thanks for reading!

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    2. "There there Lane." See it's right there in the dialogue; they might as well have said "Be a good pup and trot on."

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  5. I think this season of Mad Men has really demonstrated the over-arching theme of the entire show: Everyone wants to be something they are not.

    Lane - American
    Don - Authentic
    Pete - Respected
    Joan - Loved
    Peggy - Don
    Betty - Thin (snark)
    Roger - okay, not everyone wants to be something else (but even he remarks how the sex is never as good as he imagined it would be)

    The fact is, no matter how often you re-invent yourself, in the end, you are stuck with who you really are. Yet, we keep trying to be someone else. As Mad Men shows us, the results can be disastrous.

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    1. True. Unless you're Madonna--joking of course. But that's a good point; you can either try to put on someone else's clothes, or make the necessary alterations to your own wardrobe.

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    2. Love the idea of people not being who they want to be/not being allowed to be who they want to be. Great insight!

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  6. Do you think it'll be Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Campbell now or Harris? We know Ken doesn't want to be a partner...

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    1. IRL, one of two things would probably happen - since there was a clear distinction b/t "on the door" partners and "junior" partner (Pete), they might honor Lane's memory by keeping it SCDP (and also hush up the resignation letter) or they might clip it to SCD unless either Pete or Joan were elevated to "name" status. Keeping partner names after death is not uncommon. The "Dewey" in the recently bankrupted law firm Dewey LeBeouf, was none other than two-time GOP Presidential aspirant (and long deceased) and former NY Governor, Thomas E. Dewey.

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  7. I thought you'd be interested in this article -

    http://www.vulture.com/2012/06/mad-men-first-season-suicide-adam-don.html

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