“Mad Men” — Babylon
Um, Don… who are you?
After failing to post about Mad Men the past couple weeks (which is a shame since last week’s episode involving Pete’s glorious ascent to the middle — and near-colossal fall — was easily the best episode to date) we return this week with “Babylon†an episode that had two interesting things happening. On the one side we start to get a glimpse as to why these guys consider the ad-game to be the zenith of creative-capitalism. On the other, we start to see that our “hero†Don Draper is hardly who he purports to be, which isn’t so much of a surprise as it is an unsettled peeling away of a character who up until now has mostly been seen as the poster-boy for the thoughtful alpha-male set. More after the jump…
While the storyline with Don/Dickie and his so-called brother was interesting as drama, I’d rather start with the “advertising as gateway to the arts†angle, which I found more culturally significant. When one of the office guys gets a short story published in The Atlantic, it sets off a hysterical wave of jealousy amongst his male co-workers. In an era before film school, advertising was as good a gig as any if one’s true aspirations were more in line with the artistic. After all, both advertising and good fiction both share the same underlying goal: sell the person on a lifestyle that is currently not their own.
What I found most fascinating was the notion that an ad guy would automatically think that his “art†was significant because he happened to work in the industry – such was the case with Pete, who convinced his wife to try and get a story of his own published by her former lover (which could ultimately result in something far more damaging than a byline in Boys Life). This is compared to Ken, who got the Atlantic story published. He clearly had talent (and a talent at using his achievement for personal gain and infuriating his co-workers).
The whole thing creates such a hilarious juxtaposition. At this same time in American history (and just a few miles south on the island of Manhattan) the beat generation was in full swing. Yet, here are these guys sitting in big offices on Madison Avenue drinking bourbon and smoking cigarettes from decorative table displays trying to get their wives reaction to a short story about a man hunting a bear.
â€But honey, why is the bear talking?â€
â€He’s not literally talking; it’s what the hunter imagines him saying!â€
Now to the intrigue… While Don’s secretary Peggy discovers that all the time he’s spent out of the office is with a woman who is not his wife, he’s actually been sneaking around to meet up a man who claims to be his brother. Over the course of a few meetings we learn that Don Draper is not his real name, and that whatever his relationship was with this family (especially the now-dead mother), it was strained.
Toward the end of the episode there was a great sequence in which Don shows up at his brother’s place with a satchel. I was certain it contained a gun and he was simply going to eliminate the problem from its root. It ended up being filled with $5000 a hefty sum of money for 1960 – and hopefully for Don enough to buy his freedom from this man who keeps speaking of their past. It was a troubling scene because we’re never given a reason as to why Don should fear this man. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Adam seemed almost deliriously pleasant and hopeful to reconnect with this man. Don, in classic Don fashion, was cold and distant. There is certainly something (probably many things) that we have yet to be told about regarding Don’s life and what brought him to New York City (and by extension, what made him a great Mad Man). I suspect this will become a prominent focus of many episodes to come.
August 18th, 2007 at 1:33 am
I also thought Don was about to pull a gun from that briefcase. If you excised all the other storylines from the hour and was left with only that plot about him being confronted by his half-brother, you basically had the first 20 minutes of a classic ‘Columbo’ episode. Don would have pulled out the gun rather than the 5G, and then after the commercial break Columbo would enter the story.
And I think the timeline works in that Columbo was still in NYC in 1960. Might have been fun to see these two shows combined.,,, if only there was a younger version of Peter Falk still around.