Mad Men – The Rejected
This was the funniest episode of Mad Men I can remember, and a lot of it has to do with Peggy Olson. Of course, because it’s Mad Men and because things are not going well for Don Draper, it was also quite sad, and especially painful for poor Allison, who was absolutely right to chuck that knickknack at his head.
Don’s status as a character is balancing between two statements. “I don’t say this easily,” says Allison as she storms out of his office, “but you are not a good person.” So much of the series is based on the questions surrounding that judgment, testing what pushes these characters toward being good or bad people, and at feeling around for what point they become irrevocably one or the other. Don’s many sins have been thoroughly documented on the show, as have his many causes for sadness and anger. At what point do we have to throw up our hands and pronounce this to be an irredeemably awful person? Or, as Don so fervently hopes in his spirited denunciation of Faye Miller’s report for Pond’s Cold Cream, “you can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved.” I can turn this around, he says, and indeed, his whole life is based on the experience of waking up one morning as a completely different person. Let’s hope he manages to do it soon, because right now, he’s so lost that he can’t even finish his pitiful letter of excuse to Allison. “Right now my life is very…”
On the flip side of the coin, we have Peggy, who responds to the news of Pete’s impending fatherhood (err…re-impending?) by diving into some welcome counter culture, the first extended portrait we’ve gotten since Don’s days with Midge in the first season. Nudged along by the lesbian photo editor from Life, Peggy gets to stand next to a guy walking by wearing a bear head, get high and watch anti-Catholic art cinema, and be the snappy wit she has long wanted to be. (“He doesn’t own your vagina!” “No, but he’s renting it!” is one of the funniest lines of dialogue we’ve ever gotten from Peggy.) It’s a relief to get these occasional glimpses of other worlds. We remember how insular and controlled it feels at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, even in this newer and scrappier incarnation of Sterling Cooper. We can also better contextualize the choice that Peggy is trying to make, highlighted by the opposition created at the end of the episode. On one side of the glass, Peggy and her new bohemian friends, on the other, Pete and the good ol’ boys. The other side of the glass may not seem appealing – a guy who left her pregnant, a boss who sleeps with secretaries. But it also represents professional success, mentorship, and the telltale engagement ring she surreptitiously slips on during the focus group. If Don is balancing between his past and his future, so too is Peggy. The difference is that our metaphor for Don’s choice is an unfinished sentence that makes us wonder whether he even knows enough about his life to pick one option over another. Peggy’s metaphor is a glass door, which lets her see both options clearly and which only requires that she pick a side.
The last thing I’d like to say about this episode is just a praise of its undeniably infectious swagger, which began with that disastrous, hilarious conference call (“Oh my god, there’s some kind of fire”) and ended with a moment between an elderly husband and wife that swerved from saccharine to comic at the last possible moment (“We’ll discuss it inside”). Its peak, and the moment that made me laugh out loud and then rewind, was this hysterical bit of physical comedy from Peggy.
There are all sorts of things you can say here – more about Don’s roll as Peggy’s mentor, a little bit on Peggy perpetually looking through glass, maybe something about the drinking. When it comes right down to it, this scene was ultimately a moment of levity in a show that can really use a little fun now and again. It won’t last, because it never does. But every once in a while there’s a guy with a bear on his head, or Peggy peaking over your office wall, and thank goodness.