mad-men-604-don-megan.jpg
Megan and Don Draper receive an unexpected proposition while out with another couple.
(Jordin Althaus/AMC)
Marriages are complex, fluid endeavors, but there are a few necessary feelings at the core of any successful long-term relationship. Love and trust are key. Respect, lust, friendship, loyalty and appreciation must be present as well, though their intensities may grow or wane with time, and it's up to each couple to figure out a healthy balance.
'To Have and to Hold' predictably broaches the subject of marriage, but it applies those basic needs, and their notable absence in some characters' lives, to other types of relationships as well. Don and Megan fight through trust issues; Joan lacks respect at work, while Harry craves more appreciation; and Peggy shrugs off her loyalty to SCDP, like she's finally learning to love again after a particularly rough break-up.
Don is once again a figure of darkness in the center of our story, the black hole in the middle of this show's galaxy, powering the rotation of all the worlds around him. He's still giving into his urges and sleeping with Sylvia, and it seems she can tell that he's in a dark place — when he asks her what she prays for, she tells him, "For you to find your peace" — but she never turns him away.
Meanwhile, Megan's star continues to rise on her soap opera, and she finds out she will be filming her first romance scene with her co-star Rod. Another co-star, Arlene, insists Megan and Don have dinner with her and her husband, the show's head writer Mel, to celebrate — and to see if this bright-eyed young actress and her hunk of a hubbie want to come back to Mel and Arlene's place, smoke some grass and "see what happens," if you catch their drift. Don doesn't bite; for a man-whore, he's impressively prude. But it opens his eyes another world, where two people seem to be genuinely happy after 18 years of marriage because, unlike Don, they admitted their urges to each other and found a healthy way to feed them. It's no coincidence that Arlene and Mel are the only characters in this entire episode that seem to be genuinely happy.
Joan is sick of being a partner who still gets treated like a secretary.
When Don shows up on set and watches Megan film her love scene — it's the first time he's ever been on the set, unsurprisingly, and he readily admits he's never even watched the show — it fills him with rage. He glowers at her as she walks off set. Probably only a day removed from his own last act of infidelity, he hypocritically scolds Megan: "Were you at least going to brush your teeth before you came home?" And he doesn't stop there with the shame-on-you act, adding, "You kiss people for money. You know who does that?" before returning to Sylvia's bed in the blink of an eye.
His anger toward his wife's success is probably intensified by his own failure to capture Heinz Ketchup. When condiment king Timmy urges SCDP to give him a private pitch, Don enlists Stan and Pete onto a secret squad to work out "Project K." As they leave after a fairly successful pitch, though, Peggy and Ted are waiting for their turn in the hallway, a surprise that seems to shake Don's foundation. He sticks around to hear Peggy through the door, and she puts on her best Don impression for an extremely convincing pitch.
(A reader writes in to help clarify that Cutler Gleason and Chaough also lost out on the account to mega-agency J Walter Thompson, which is why both firms wound up at the same bar to drown their sorrows). When he learns that the baked beans division is also leaving him for talking to the arch-rival ketchup, he's defeated. "There's nothing better than being known for your loyalty," Ken says sarcastically, parroting an inspired bit of hypocrisy Don preached just a week ago.
But SCDP isn't all glum, thanks to some quick-thinking television work by Harry and his team. Dow Chemical has fallen on hard times since the atrocities of the Vietnam War continue to play out in full view of the world with lots of help from their ruthless chemical weapon, napalm. Harry's solution — a Joe Namath variety show starring Joey Heatherton, Julie Andrews and John Wayne — is an immediate hit with the execs, and they sign on to sponsor. But poor Harry, always subject to ridicule by the bosses that don't understand how important his work is, decides he's had enough. He storms into a partners' meeting and demands to be made a top executive. Even when they cut him a commission check worth his entire year's salary, he's not satisfied. Harry wants to be a player, and with the inarguable importance of television, it's getting increasingly harder to deny him.
Joan gets caught in the crossfire of Harry's rage, mostly because of the dishonest way she became a partner. But when her doe-eyed friend from Spokane shows up, Mary Kay kit in tow, we learn that being on top is not all it's cracked up to be. After all, Kate wishes she could be just like her powerful New York friend Joan, but Joan lets her know the job isn't all that sweet — after all these years, and even with her title, she is little more than a secretary. At least she finds love (or at least a welcoming pair of lips), the first time we've seen her feel wanted since her horrible husband split and she sold her soul for Jaguar.
The darkness and uncertainty hound Don now more aggressively than ever before, and since he is the mass at the center of this system, that darkness bleeds out and infects everyone around him. His unhappiness with his own choices sour the achievements of Megan, and even his affair seems to be losing its passion. His business moves are failing, and the unrest is growing around him inside the walls of SCDP. Right now Don is a man in decline who can still convince everyone he's in control. But like in marriage, pretending everything's okay doesn't make it so. It's only a matter of time now until the facade falls away, and the world gets its first glimpse at Don Draper, the failure.
Notes:
• Don's secretary Dawn got her first real character moments tonight, defending SCDP to a friend and working to earn Joan's respect after a little screw-up. It will be interesting to see if she grows more now that she's in charge of the supply closet (that's a punishment, by the way).
• Two cool songs on tonight's episode: The psychedelic tune when Stan and Don are smoking pot and working on Heinz is "Friends I Haven't Met Yet" by Blue Sandelwood Soap; the sultry song playing when Joan kisses Johnny in the Electric Circus is "Bonnie and Clyde" by Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot.
• The Electric Circus, the groovy nightclub Joan and Kate visited, was a very real and popular spot in the East Village. Around this time the house band there was the Velvet Underground, as organized by Andy Warhol, which must have been pretty damn cool. Again, the show emphasizes the importance of that neighborhood in the evolution of culture and art, especially inside New York.
• The Columbia student protests of Dow over napalm were also very real, as evidenced by this March 21, 1968 article in the Columbia Spectator: 19 Arrested in Protest at Dow. The Pulitzer-winning photo of the Vietnamese girl running naked coated in the chemical, for many the definitive napalm memory, would not come for another four years.
• Arlene, in between intense moments of ogling Don, manages to cut to his core when she cryptically remarked, "I'm sure he's a man who plays many roles." Man, how are strangers so good at saying things to Don that also serve as metaphors for his life?
• Help me out here: What did Kate mean when she said that the men at that phone-at-your-table restaurant "go for a certain type"? Was she talking about younger men with older women, or guys who like married ladies? Or did I miss something else completely?
• "Women don't like football." "Have you ever asked them about Joe Namath?"
• Want to give a shout-out to a great Mad Men blog: Mad Style, by Tom + Lorenzo, extracts deep meaning and symbolism by going over pretty much every outfit worn on the show. It's impressive and surprisingly interesting, even if you don't care a bit for fashion.