Mad Men: season five, episode nine - Dark Shadows

SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching season five of Mad Men on Sky Atlantic. Don't read on if you haven't seen episode nine

Paul MacInnes' episode eight blog

The miseducation of Sally Draper continues. So pressing, it appears, is the need to drag the soul of the eldest Draper in various directions at once that even her mother is brought into proceedings this week. Betty, since last we saw her, has stopped wearing a ton of prosthetics and is now just an identifiably overweight woman. But while she's lost the fat suit she hasn't lost her instinct for malevolence and, naturally, she opts to channel it through her only daughter.

The trick is this: to get Sally asking Don and Megan about Anna Draper and how her existence ought to affect any pretension towards happiness in the current Draper household. The plot fails, thanks to Megan (and subsequently Don) but in the process we see Sally imbibing instruction from all sides and reflecting different aspects back to her seniors. Whose traits will she inherit?

Firstly there's Betty. Earlier episodes may have led us to suspect that her mother's intemperate demands could perhaps have driven Sally away from her (and into the arms of Glen). But when Sally isn't near her mother we see her acting like her – largely in the deployment of an incredibly vicious tongue. We've seen her diss Grandma Pauline to all and sundry in earlier episodes, but today she uses it on Megan with even sharper effect. Megan and Sally, in Sally's own words, have become friends; going shopping and exchanging tips of the acting trade. But after Megan is forced to deal with the Anna revelation, Sally rebukes her, calls her a phoney and then – as an overwrought Megan looks to leave – summons up a line that would cut Megan and her desire to be liked quite deeply. "Are you going to go and make yourself cry again?"

So we see Sally both bond with and devastate Megan. We see Sally's willingness to take her mother's side describing her as "someone who doesn't tell lies", but we also see her lie to Betty at the end of the affair, pretending there was no row over Anna and causing kitchen containers to be slapped to the floor.

Sally's line towards her father is completely opposed. She is combative in his presence but, when absent, she follows his word. By taking up her mother's hint about Anna, Sally knows she can needle her father over his past. She has not forgotten "the lady who called you Dick". But when confronted with her actions and expected to alter them, Sally obeys. This I would argue has two causes: (1) the eternal and unwavering charisma of Don Draper; (2) his perception that while Sally is still a child she is showing a desire to understand that deserves acknowledgement. Don both scolds Sally and takes her into his trust. When Sally next sees Betty she says, in a delightfully formalised phrase, "Daddy showed me pictures [of Anna] and they spoke very fondly of her."

****

The worst fantasy ever. I often wonder to myself how FHM or GQ can sell so many copies by peddling a consistenly underimaginative view of male sexual fantasy. Girl in knickers. Girl in show in knickers. Girl in knickers and wild animal. Etc.

I wonder, but it obviously works because here we have one of his generation's finest minds, Peter Dyckman Campbell, caught in the middle of an erotic daydream of girl in knickers and fur coat. What's more it's sealed with a climactic line of dialogue that wouldn't look out of place in a Robin Askwith movie: "I forgot you and then I saw you in the New York Times Sunday magazine..."

Of course the very next image is a shot of an equally smug and cretinous Pete reclining on his nasty (but highly modern) couch. But let's not pretend that this little idea could not have been conveyed in a way that didn't involve a half-naked woman. (I feel similar about Megan in her bra. Ahem.)

Ginzo, ginzo, ginzo. Royally screwed by the man he most wants to topple, that Draper man again, he has had a difficult week. But yet, I feel, not a week he couldn't have anticipated. From the moment he undercut Don at the footwear presentation by dragging in a second, bolder line of approach, Michael Ginsberg's card has been marked. This week we see him literally invite trouble by turning the internal presentation of the Sno-ball campaign into a direct scrap between himself and Don. The fact that he wins is by the by. Don has been alerted to the presence of a rival and, lo, when it comes to make the final Sno-ball presentation, Mike's idea is left in the cab.

Maybe, as Stan Rizzo, suggests – he should have read the whole of Ozymandias. Or maybe, as Roger points out to Peggy in the lift, Mike should have realised that it's every man for himself. Certainly Don, whether inspired by jealousy a fear of becoming redundant, old or whatever, knew enough to take charge of the situation and make sure it worked to his advantage. The only problem with that being, of course, that Ginzo now owes him one.

Not sure what to say about Roger and Jane's ill-feted and ill-founded encounter. It's typical Roger, not empathetic enough to realise how his own desires would impact on Jane, too blasé to believe that his charm wouldn't allow for him to blag his way out of it. That said, Jane too had a choice. It seems by the state of desperation she finds herself in the next morning however, that it was a choice she was pretending she hadn't made.

This week's notes

"Actually it's reminiscent of certain experiences for some people." Will Roger ever shut up about his trip? He's becoming a boring old hippy before boring old hippies were even invented.

When was the last time Peggy came up with some breathtaking work? Certainly her New Yorker-inspired Sno-ball pitch was dullsville. And the Heinz stuff, even the camp fire, didn't channel as many ideas as Megan's approach. Just asking.

Megan's fake crying is terrible. She looks like a goose with a cold.

Culture Club

It would appear that the LSD-rekindling work in Roger's office is a piece of Op Art, probably by the leading figure in the movement, Victor Vasarely. Known as "Op" because of its tendency towards optical illusion, the art was inspired by the functional imperatives of the Bauhaus, but obviously took a left turn somewhere off that path. Roger has had such pieces in his swanky office since last season, but now they have acquired greater 'meaning'.

Here's the full text of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias for any ginzo types in the building.

Time stamps

The Thanksgiving of November 1966 saw an unexpected outbreak of smog over New York City. Find out more in this scintillating study, The Weather and Circulation of November 1966.