Despite its ability to create exquisite and largely self-contained hours of entertainment, Mad Men is a show you need to watch consistently to love. Otherwise you wouldn't appreciate the subtleties; in the character traits, in the props, in the acting. But more so, you wouldn't appreciate when the show isn't subtle. The rare occasions that, like in "The Suitcase," come unexpectedly and are instances at which to marvel. Sunday night's episode was an entire hour of the kind of in-your-face drama that Mad Men is not all about. Yet, it was my favorite episode this season.
As someone who has watched more than a few television series, I love when writers do this: Leave unwanted exposition at the door and allow the audience to fill in a lot of blanks. It gets to the goods faster and in a more meaningful way. Don and Peggy's scenes together last night were some of the best either of them has had on the show so far. But, again, most of it was underlying emotions rising to the surface, backstories that had to be known for them to mean anything when Don/Peggy shared them with each other. I can see how if you have only watched this season, or tuned in this week after the show won its third Emmy last week, you'd think the episode was a little boring.
If you didn't know Don Draper, you wouldn't have realized that he has hardly ever before behaved like he did last night; not with his ex-wife, not with his army of mistresses, not with frenemy Roger Sterling. At the end of the episode, Peggy asked Don if he would like his office door open, or closed. "Open," he says, which is the entire theme of "The Suitcase." Don opens up to Peggy in a way that is startling and sad. It's clear he needs her around during one of the most difficult nights of his life. He receives a call from California; a call from Anna Draper's 20-something Berkeley hippie niece Stephanie, calling to say that Anna has died. We don't see him return the phone call until the very end of the episode, but Don knows the entire time that he's been left to fill a void. "The only person in the world who knew who I really was," he says about Anna. For the night, and maybe from now on, Peggy is the one to fill that void.
Don's angst is set against the night of 1964's big fight: Cassius Clay (as he's known to those at SCDP; many others, including Pete Campbell, call him Muhammad Ali) vs. Sonny Liston. Subsequently, the episode was full of fighting: Peggy vs. her boyfriend, her mom. Don vs. Peggy. Duck vs. Don. "The Suitcase" was an apt title for an episode fully devoted to sorting through the characters' personal baggage. Draper chooses to handle his grief by slipping into his ever-present workaholism. Closely paired with his alcoholism, he quickly becomes belligerent, emotional and bullies Peggy into staying. They are working on an ad about suitcases, for their client Samsonite. Peggy still feels like she needs to prove something to him, so she chooses to stay. Three or four times. Missing her (surprise) birthday dinner planned by her boyfriend. Their fight on the phone doesn't end well; her boyfriend is rightfully upset that Peggy is choosing to stat at work (again) and breaks up with her. Peggy tells Don about her personal woes, which leads into her anger with Don over the Glo-Coat ad. He is at first somewhere between sympathetic and fed up, telling her that she's old enough to stop making such big deal about birthdays, and then chewing her out for telling him he stole the Glo-Coat idea from her (turns out it was a nugget of an idea in a group of many that Peggy came up with). He immediately feels pretty rotten when she starts crying in front of him. Peggy has never seemed more like a 20-something in this episode, and that was nice to see. Don makes up for it by hilariously stumbling upon Roger Sterling's memoir recordings, and bringing Peggy in to listen to the old man's ramblings about Bert Cooper not having any testicles.
I didn't much enjoy the Duck Phillips story. For her birthday, he sends Peggy a business card with her name on it, indicating that he is starting an ad agency and wants her to be a creative director. But, oh wait, he's still a raging alcoholic, and he actually got fired for it, so now he sits home all day and dreams up fake ad agencies. Then he barges into the SCDP offices, pining for Peggy and almost defecating on Roger Sterling's office floor. The whole thing was strange, if not a good way to bring up some of Peggy's personal past and show Don sticking up for Peggy, as he wrestles Duck at some point after Duck calls Peggy a whore.
My favorite scenes by far were Don and Peggy's late-night excursions to a bright diner, then to a dark bar, where they listen to the Clay-Liston fight and talk about Peggy's abortion. If you haven't watched the show intently since Season 1, you would've missed this tidbit, nestled as it was between naturally subtle dialogue that barely hinted at it. Peggy tells Don her mom thinks him responsible for getting her pregnant, because he was the only one who visited her in the hospital after the abortion. Don asks Peggy if she ever thinks about it; she says sometimes, at playgrounds. The entire conversation didn't include the word "child" or "abortion" or "Pete Campbell," the actual father. As Don did earlier in the season, Peggy talks about knowing what she's supposed to want (a steady boyfriend and marriage), and the difference between that and what she actually wants (her job). They share stories about their fathers, and how both died in front of them. (Peggy's reaction to Don's story about his father getting kicked to death by a horse was funny; I remember having the same reaction during that scene: Did they really just kill this guy with a horse kick?) Don genuinely likes Peggy, and this episode was a really wonderful glimpse of that.
As morning arrives at the SCDP offices, both Peggy and Don have spent the night there (during which Don pukes in front of her, a really nasty scene, but a precious bonding experience nonetheless). Don promptly makes his California call upon waking up. And he's managed to create an ad for Samsonite: Playing off that morning's newspaper story about Muhammad Ali's victory, the Samsonite suitcase stands over the other, labeled "The Champion."
See you next week for "The Summer Man."
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2010.