Oh how clever you are, Matthew Weiner. Surprised to have won your third consecutive Emmy for Mad Men, you said last night? I don't think so. How strange would it have been to watch the Clio awards reward Don Draper if Mad Men had lost their own award for Best Drama? I can't be sure that Weiner wrote "Waldorf Stories" knowing it would air sometime in late August, or someone made the decision to air it alongside the Emmys. In any case, congrats Mad Men on another deserved win. I do take issue with the fact that for the past three years Mad Men has won over my new most favorite drama, AMC's Breaking Bad, which is really one of the most compelling shows I've ever seen. It deserves an Emmy simply for the fact that people keep tuning in to watch a story about a guy with cancer cook meth to help his family.
Last night's Mad Men was pretty good. I wasn't blown away by any part of it, and I thought the Roger flashbacks were interesting but somewhat out of place. What is this, Lost?
The big news of the evening is that Don Draper has been nominated for a Clio award for his Glo-Coat ad, and then he wins. A nice recognition for the only part of Don's life that's not (yet) spinning out of control: his career. A word here about my favorite platonic couple on the show. I've always really enjoyed how Joan and Don, who would both win the award for most sexy in the office, have never hinted at sexuality between them. I think it's far too obvious a relationship for the show to initiate, and obvious has no place in Mad Men. I am hoping their under-the-table hand holding at the awards ceremony was nothing more than an indication of Don's nerves and Joan's sweetness. (Plus the shot of her holding both Don's and Roger's hands at the same time was amusing.) I don't really like the idea of Don screwing that relationship up, and I'm not even sure it would be that sexy.
Don is very happy to win, and is very drunk shortly after. The whole thing leads to a chain of rather terrible events for Don. After getting hammered at the ceremony, he is rejected by Dr. Faye Miller. Then, insisting the ad team—Pete, Joan, Roger and himself—go back to the office after the awards ceremony, he drunkenly pitches to the men from SCDP's latest venture, Life cereal, and they reject him too.They aren't thrilled with his tagline, "Eat Life by the Bowlful," accompanied by a small boy eating from a giant bowl. So in his drunken stupor, Don accidentally, or intentionally, plagiarizes something he heard earlier that morning from a young man vying for a job at SCDP: "The cure for the common breakfast." The Life guys think it's gold.
The tiny problem of where Don actually got this brilliant idea came in the form of a "24-year-old" who wants an advertising job. As a joke from Roger to Don, this young man, who is the cousin of Roger's 20-something wife Jane, is sent to Don's office to waste a bunch of Don's precious time by showing him a portfolio with barely any original work in it. (More to follow on the great casting choice made by placing Danny Strong* in this role.) Don inevitably has to hire him after he steals his idea, which is good for me, because I already love their strange interaction.
A young, pathetic man begging the elite Mr. Draper for a job apparently lends itself to a recollection of another time and place. Cue the flashback. And my least favorite part of the episode. Hamm managed as always to do a great job of slipping right back into the incorruptible, strapping young man he sometimes plays during the Anna Draper story, so I could tell it was a flashback. But other than that, it just felt odd. The Anna Draper-Dick Whitman backstory felt necessary for us to see; Don hid that part of his life, so the revealing of it through a flashback felt right. This weird foray into Roger Sterling's mind didn't. We see through a series of these that Roger met Don while he was shopping for a fur coat (for Joan). Don was the salesman, who happened to come up with advertisements for the place that he'd hang on the wall. They get to talking advertising, and after Roger leaves, Don persists, first placing his portfolio in the box containing the coat Roger purchased (Roger doesn't look at it; he's far too busy looking at Joan wearing a mink and nothing else), and then showing up at the Sterling Cooper building.
I don't know what to do with the information that Roger hired Don to come work at Sterling Cooper because he was drunk at lunch one day and Don was being a pest. What did this shed light on? Roger's lucky that Don turned out to be a spectacular creative genius? Both of the men have drinking problems? Don didn't really work his way into anything, he just knows how to work a drunk man? His line about wanting to become a big manly man working in a manly man's office was adorable, though. Hamm laid on the good-boy charm thick, and that part I enjoyed. Mad Men: Flashbacks are not for you.
The other horrific part of this episode was watching Don go home with a brunette and wake up two days later with a different woman. Yup, a different woman. A blond, actually. Sleazy from the looks of it. He is awakened on Sunday morning, having presumably been hammered since Friday night, by an angry phone call from Betty. This scene was sad all around. I get that Don is a slut whose life is slipping out from under him; I'm not really so sure I want to see much more of it.
As is usual lately, Peggy has one of the most entertaining stories. There is a new art director (Is Sal Roman ever coming back? I'm hoping with the return of Ken Cosgrove we'll soon see some other familiar faces), and Peggy doesn't like him. It's no wonder why either, he's an arrogant boob named Stan Rizzo who says things like, Playboy inspires me. Clever Peggy eventually calls the bluff of this wanna-be nudist and strips down to absolutely nothing while they are locked in a hotel room working. The poor guy is too, well, excited to focus on anything work-related, and Peggy receives a smug (awesome) victory. I love just about everything they do with her these days. And the tidbit about her being just 25 years old was pretty neat.
*I remember Danny Strong mostly as a big nerd on Gilmore Girls, and vaguely from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I think he is a great choice for the part of the young go-getter without any real talent. Plus, he felt totally appropriate in Don Draper's office. Mad Men has done a terrific job of casting from the start by choosing very good actors who aren't very well known. The latest exception is Don's nurse neighbor, the young brunette who I've seen on garbage shows like Grey's Anatomy and the CW's Everwood (don't judge me, I was a young high school kid when that show was on). She is terribly awkward on this show. It doesn't feel right that she's talking to Don Draper; she's infiltrating the world of Mad Men. She isn't a very good actress either, and she seems to have developed some sort of strange Southern accent. But her awfulness is a nice reminder that the people who make Mad Men are still human. And that when they get it right, like with newcomer Strong, it makes for such enjoyable television.
One last thing: Is "Waldorf Stories" going to be the name of Roger's memoir? More next week, with "The Suitcase."
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2010.