Point Counterpoint: David Lehman and Amy Gerstler on Mad Men Season 7 Episode 3

L to R: Jim Cutler, Joan P. Harris (nee Holloway), and Bert Cooper

On Monday, April 28, 2014 at 2:11 PM David Lehman wrote:

 

Dear Future Professor of "Mad Men" Studies,

This is the voice of Don Draper offering you "exceptional deals" on the Mercedes of your dreams. Our "breakthroughs in design" are sure to capture your custom in competition with the other cars that are paying for our time this week: Audi, the Ram 1500 truck from Dodge, Lincoln town cars, and 2013 Hondas. Take that, fat vulgar Jersey Jaguar-dealing fucker of Joan.

Speaking of cars, I see Trudy getting into a town car just to go half a block home. Still the princess, and what glorious heels, and did I really hear her order "a deconstructed martini"? From one point of view, any martini using vodka rather than gin can be said to have been deconstructed but that's a technicality. She's selling Smirnoff though I think it would be as true of Belvedere and Grey Goose. But that's just me. I believe Roger drinks vodka martinis. Back in the day (before "back in the day" was idiomatic) he specified Wolfschmidt's as his brand of choice. Imagine that.

The inevitable happens right on schedule. The marriage cannot last, but Don, content to let things be, makes Megan announce the demise just as he had done previously with Betty and Sylvia. He does reject Faye, of course, but usually he likes it when the girl says goodbye and cries on the phone and looks as elegant and cool as Megan Draper in Los Angeles.

Is Don back at the agency? He has done what anyone wanting a raise is advised to do: get an offer from another firm. I have never seen Roger Sterling so animated as when he speaks in passionate defense of Don. He resorts to legalisms. We didn't fire him, we put him on leave. It is up to the partners and they will vote against Don except for the clinching argument: money. As a partner Don must be bought out, and the others can't afford that. Besides (Roger shrewdly adds) how would you like to court a client and pass Don in the hall with Mary Wells on his lap?

 

So Don is back in the firm. Bert says so, leaving the "stipulations" for Joan to enumerate: No drinking in the office ("outside of client hospitality" -- a nice loophole). You must stick to the script (which must be approved by the partners) in presentations and you are never to be left alone with a client. Worst of all, you will report to Lou. To Lou!

 

What can he say but yes? He will (as Stacey observes) make short work of Lou.

There is an undercurrent of melancholy. Stan: "What are you doing here?" Joan: "What a pleasant surprise. . .What are you doing here?" The carousel in Central Park reminds one-eyed Ken Cosgrove of Don -- a reference to the latter's greatest triumph: the "carousel" wheel for Kodak. Peggy, defiant: "We didn't miss you." To which he sighs, and what else can he say but Thank you?

My prediction. The elegies are premature. Whatever happens now will feel original but will secretly repeat something that has already happened -- just as, when he dines with prospective employers, a beautiful blonde appears, announces her name ("Emily Arnett") and her hotel room ("top floor next to the elevator"). Just his type, too.

But when we see him enter a hotel room it is not hers but Roger's. He is intent on going back to the firm and being the genius that everyone else in advertising wants to be. He even sheds his hat and dons a hatless raincoat look.

 

Meanwhile, some things don't change, even though the daughters of farmers have shed their bras. Betty Draper's kids will always hate her.

Love,

Harold (Harry) Crane, head of media, the most dishonest man in Jim Cutler’s entire experience of advertising, and will I lose my job as a result?

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Amy Gerstler wrote:

TEN Questions for the Holder of the Honorary Sorbonne Professorship of Les Hommes Fous, (david, please correct my french?):

Do you believe Megan Draper is the “new woman” and Betty Draper-Francis the old, foundation garment wearing model?

What movie is Don Draper watching at the opening of this episode? It looks like an Antonioni movie, but there is also a whiff of San Francisco about it, n’est-ce pas?

What do you think will happen to Dawn if she EVER EVER puts Don on hold again???

Is there a more heart squeezing sound and sight on television in the year of our lord 2014 than Don Draper apologizing during a late night coast to coast phone call?

Does Stan have a crush on Peggy, regardless of how nasty, brittle, self concerned, competitive and vindictive our once innocent Peggy has become? He is nicer to her than anyone else can bring themselves to be, and seems to have a hide as thick as a rhino’s when it comes to withstanding her increasingly caustic, withering remarks.

Is it a surprise or to be expected that Don is a terrible flower arranger? The impatient way he flops into a vase the bouquet he bought Megan after he flies to LA and is waiting to surprise her in her LA hideaway made the Japanese Ikebana-ist within this student of Les Hommes Fous shudder uncontrollably.

Was there something weirdly sexy about watching Betty Draper-F. drink a sip of warm, just-squirted-from-the-cow milk out of a NOT pristine galvanized metal farm pail and then hearing her murmur shyly, after wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, with a hint of surprise in her voice, “it’s sweet!”

Are not loving a parent and hating a parent the same thing (re Betty’s saddest of the sad questions to her second husband about her children: “Why don’t they love me?”)

Will Megan end up on a Twilight Zone episode, due to her frazzled chance encounter, when assailing a director she’d auditioned for, with Rod Serling?

If so, will Matt Weiner treat us to a scene from said T. Z. episode as part of an upcoming installment of Les Hommes Fous? One can only hope.

Sincerely,

Adjunct Professor of Mad Men in Training (on her year of study abroad)

Comments

[Kay Masters]

Terrific exchange! Will you be doing it all season?