Mad Men

Sunday night has the only two hours of television I currently look forward to each week. Mad Men is great TV and True Blood is great (guilty) fun. Mad Men manages to capture a time, just under 50 years ago and make it seem like an alien world. It also has some of the best characters on TV, all with something to hide or prove, which isn't too different than now.

* Spoilers *

Last night's episode was particularly good, but I had to think about it a while. I saw some comments that there's no plot and it wandered all over the place. I don't agree. I think every scene was about people dealing with their class or position in society. I don't think there was a wasted scene as it covered every character in this light.

At Roger's country club party every pairing was interesting. First off there's the Roger and Jane relationship where he gave up his long term marriage and married Don's secretary who proceeded to get drunk at the party. Roger singing to her in black face and the fact that only Don was disgusted by it completely defined the time. Don later saying to Roger "No one thinks you're happy, they think you're foolish." and Roger saying you get to pick who comes to such parties also put these two seeming friends in their places.

Don had the conversation with the guy at the bar about not fitting in because of where they came from. Betty was impressed with the stranger merely because of his good looks and charms and then because he was a politician. The reference to governor Nelson Rockefeller marrying a divorcee further underscored the still huge gender gap and hypocritical moral distinctions as they're all adulterers. Don and Betty clearly approached the party completely differently. She was happy to be back in society and he just wanted to get away from it.

The other co-workers there were trying to fit in. Harry's wife had to convince him he was good enough to have conversation with them and he wasn't. Pete while eyeing some potential clients has to be told by Don not to hand out his card, seemingly to avoid being crass. I'm still not sure where Pete and Trudy's dance put them in the social hierarchy. Were they valued for their skill or treated like mere entertainment?

Meanwhile Peggy at work is holding her own. She first puts down Harry's behavior in the model interviews. Then she's more professional than Paul and Smitty while working over the weekend. Well until she joins them smoking pot, but even that raises her standing in their eyes. Even Paul and his pusher have an argument over Paul's standing back in Princeton. Then there's the obvious exchanges between Peggy and her secretary, who's appalled by her behavior, but Peggy isn't worried at all. The ERA movement is still a decade away.

We first see Joan having a thinly veiled conversation with Jane. Jane used to work under her as Don's secretary and is now marrying Roger, who Joan had an affair with. Jane was lauding it over her and Joan, always composed, barely held in her contempt.

Later at her dinner party we see Joan arguing with her husband Greg about seating etiquette, he's intimidated by the senior surgeon coming over. Later she finds out he's botched a surgery at work and obviously didn't tell her. This will move him down the ladder at work and with his wife. Joan commands some respect from the wives at the party but still gets advice from them. Like Pete's dancing at the party, Joan's accordion playing seemed like she was merely a performer (she was embarrassed) but she knocked it out of the park and everyone took notice.

Betty's father Gene is at home; the father is now the child. He still treats Carla the maid with contempt; but Carla's talking back to him. And finally we get to Sally. She experiments with theft, probably for the first time. She takes advantage of Grandpa's disfunction and lowered position in the family. But in the end, she can't stomach it and gives back the money. She even finds a way to do it so that she can retain some face, even though Gene and Carla immediately figure out what really happened. There's hope for Sally and the whole next generation to get over all this stuff.

Really great stuff.