THAT’S WHAT THE BLOG IS FOR! Mad Men S1E9–S1E10

S1E9 Shoot

The gurlz have their gunz out! After many episodes of introduction and expansion, this is the kind of jaunt where instead of learning something new, many things that have been percolating all season come to a head, culminating in the shot of Betty taking down pigeons with a BB gun. It’s a gorgeous scene, directed by Paul Feig to have a Tarentino-like eroticism as Betty bites down on her cigarette and squints her beautiful face into the camera. A few years later Feig would go on to a film career specialising in women behaving badly and insulting each other in kind of sexy ways. Along with this all-timer of a send-off he gets a great juicy scene with Joan and Peggy getting into it over the role of women in the workforce. Snappy.

Betty’s plot in this episode confirms a lot of what could be inferred already, as her therapist comes to the same conclusion we have already when he speaks for the first time to tell Betty that she’s angry with her mother. She’s not in a place to hear it, but it’s clear that even if she can rationalize her mother’s harsh parenting to a chubby kid as a gesture of care, she is furious that no one told her what she was supposed to do after she won her handsome husband and had some kids.

She’s gestured towards this before, in “Red in the Face,” but this is the episode where it becomes clear that it’s not just an existential question: she really doesn’t have enough to do. Her kids are old enough that they don’t need intensive monitoring anymore (and she isn’t doing it, regardless), and doing laundry and dinner only takes up so much time. There are only three TV channels! So when she gets an offer to model again she jumps at it, and when that opportunity is taken away to punish Don (probably) she cannot figure out how to keep trying.

It should not be devastating to be told by your husband that he thinks you’re a wonderful mother, but when Don tells Betty that she has the most important job in the world she looks almost as rejected as she does getting fired from her modeling gig. Mothering is not what she feels good at, or takes pride in. It’s just a byproduct of being a wife, where she does get some satisfaction when Don will let her (maybe if he let her get more practice she could operate at the level of McCann-Erickson exec Jim Hobart’s wife, who smoothly gets Don away from her husband so he can work on Betty). But Don keeps his business and his sex life away from her, and so she’s stuck doing light chores, feeding the kids, and shooting the neighbor’s birds. #MomLife.

The conflict between Joan and Peggy doesn’t take up an enormous amount of time in the episode, but it is a great contrast to Betty’s mini-tragedy. These are both women raised in the same milieu that Betty was, but she’s essentially retired from the game they’re both still playing. It’s a tremendous fight between these women, the verbal equivalent of pulling out a BB gun on your coworker. The thing is that failing to get married can open up opportunities for a girl. Both of them are really doing fine at the moment (so they think, hehehe), but they are too judgemental to appreciate that. Joan is having fun and won’t stop being gorgeous any time soon. Peggy is writing copy and is NOT a virgin! I’m so happy for both of you!

More Thoughts

The full fight is worth recording:

Peggy: I’m the first girl to do any writing in this office, since the war. Marge told me.

Joan: Writing? Is that what this is about? I thought you were doing that to get close to Paul.

Peggy: Thank you, again.

Joan: I heard you were being considered for an account because a client’s wife saw you and thought it would be OK if he worked with you.

Peggy: You know you’re not a stick.

Joan: And yet I never wonder what men think of me. You are hiding a very attractive, young girl with too much lunch.

Peggy: I know what men think of you: that you’re looking for a husband, and you’re fun. And not in that order.

Joan: Peggy, this isn’t China. There’s no money in virginity.

Peggy: I’m not a virgin.

Joan: No, of course not.

Peggy: I just realized something. You think you’re being helpful.

Joan: Well I am trying, dear!

Betty having access to social media would have been a nightmare for Sally, but I think she would have been very successful. She puts on a gorgeous show of being mom for Don before he heads out and she smokes in the dark for a while.

This viewing I actually think Don would have been okay with Betty beginning to model again, although he definitely would have been nasty about it if it ever caused him some inconvenience or embarrassment. That being said, Jim Hobart doesn’t know Don very well if he thinks he can be coerced into doing anything. Poor Betty.

One of the best running gags in this episode is no one being able to conceive of a homosexual in the fashion and art world. Francine’s confusion that a designer would want to make clothing for Betty and not sleep with her has a very simple answer that she cannot for the life of her get to. I need that romper this summer, BTW, if anyone is looking for a muse.

Betty sadly admitting she likes hot dogs is very my-female-ancestors coded.

Does Don really want to live a life outside of his work? Unclear! Let’s watch 6.5 more seasons to see!

S1E10 Long Weekend

Towards the end of this episode Don tries to kiss Rachel Menken, saying: “This is all there is,” to which she replies: “that’s just an excuse for bad behavior”. My husband, who was watching the episode with me, asked: do you think the show believes that?

I think it agrees with both of them. Don is behaving badly, and I don’t think you can make an argument that the writing believes him to be in the right here after showing his phone call Betty: full of her rage and grief and petty discontent. “I know people say life goes on, and it does. But no one tells you that’s not a good thing.” – Betty, depressed and funny as always, highlighting the theme of the episode with its best line. He should have been with her and not Roger in the first place, but he fundamentally doesn’t respect her inability to accept her father’s new girlfriend. That is reasonable, but his behavior is still bad. Surely a pitch-man of his caliber could sell his wife on the idea that it’s nice for her father to have some company.

This is the same man who was just telling Rachel that romance was invented by advertising executives, and now he’s giving her the complete opposite argument with just as much punch behind it. He believes it too, he believes it both times.

This is an episode that is more fun to watch than to write about, because while it’s as entertaining as any episode of this show, (I don’t actually think there’s any bad episodes, but there are better ones) the theme is kind of THERE, fairly self-evident, and repeated often. You are going to DIE, this episode says. You are already DYING. What are you going to do with this life? Nixon is getting youthed out of the election by Kennedy’s jingly marching anthems. Joan’s roommate is too broke and discouraged to pretend she’s not in love with Joan anymore. Roger, failing to book a date with Joan, sleeps with a teenager, has a heart attack, and remembers that he loves his family.

What is Don going to do? Death is hanging over the whole episode, giving credence to Don’s certainty in the moment with Rachel. When he says this is all there is, he is saying it having just witnessed Roger’s return to the fold, but instead of inspiring him to make his way to bed with his wife and children he visits a relative stranger instead and tries to make her know him. And that’s the thing about Don, who wants to be known but can’t stop trying to start over either. You know everything about me, Don tells Rachel, which made me laugh, but then he tells her more than he’s ever told Betty: his mother was a whore, and when she died he lived with his father and his wife. And then he died. Everyone dies. You have to live, but no one will make you live well.

More Thoughts

Along with all the dying there is also a runner about self-made men, a descriptor that Don identifies with more literally than most. The firm talks about Kennedy the same way the media talked about Mamdani during his campaign. They can’t stop talking about how good-looking he is, and how fun his videos are, how he comes from privilege. I’m realizing writing this that I have no idea what Kennedy’s actual platform was. My Darling Pete, of course, is the only one who gets it. He would have gotten a zetrocard.

John Slattery is very good in this episode, by turns convincingly smarmy, charming, and repentant.

Joan’s roommate is the saddest story in these forty-something minutes, and I think it’s the last time we see her, although I might be mistaken. Imagine confessing your love and having them respond with: you’re having a hard day. Brutal. And like Peggy noted in the last episode; Joan probably thinks she’s being helpful, both by ignoring what was said and picking up those two ugly men later (JOAN YOU ARE TOO HOT FOR THOSE MEN!). Carol’s “do whatever you want” to the pickup is equally brutal, although she gives it a little gallows humor as well. Do we think her name is a Highsmith reference?

Don is uncharacteristically nice to Pete when he loses an account. The show is very good at writing characters inconsistently in a way that is more accurate to how people actually behave. He doesn’t need to shit on Pete all the time, just when he’s in a bad mood. Speaking of Pete, he tries to pull a Roger Sterling on Peggy but she’s not having any of it anymore. Good for Peggy.

Don has Dick Whitman hair when he goes to see Rachel at the end.

Roger talking shit on Chicago and then apologizing to Don: “Sorry, maybe you’re from there” is so funny, especially because Don gives him nothing in return. Man of mystery.

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Natasha Ochshorn is a PhD Candidate in English at CUNY, writing on fantasy texts and environmental grief. She’s lived in Brooklyn her whole life and makes music as Bunny Petite. Follow her on Instagram and Bluesky.