By Walter Dellinger

Every Sunday after the newest episode of “Mad Men,” lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger will host an online dialogue about the show. The participants include literature professor Toril Moi, political science professor  David L. Paletz, media expert Evangeline Morphos,  and historian Alan Brinkley. Dellinger will post his thoughts shortly after each episode ends at 11 p.m., and the others will add their commentary in the hours and days that follow. Readers are invited to join in with their thoughts in the comments.

Walter Dellinger

The seven-year-old daughter of a friend recently came home from school and confided puzzlement to her mother: “Mom, I don’t know what it is, but I really like the bad boys in my class. You know the ones who don’t do what they’re supposed to do? Those are the ones I like.“

Aaahhh, it was ever thus. Betty Draper is a good example of this instinct. The wonderfully uxorious Henry Francis just doesn’t seem to inspire the passion of her ne’er-do-well ex, Don Draper. And young Sally seems to be following in her mother’s footsteps. Will this show go truly creepy as Sally and Betty compete for Glen? If that happens, I could bail and opt for watching “Brady Bunch” re-runs on Sunday nights. (What Freddy Rumsen says of Roger Sterling’s swirling modernist painting is, however, equally true of my attitude toward this season: “I feel like I’m getting sucked into that thing.”)

Compelling darkness continues on the set of “Mad Men,” even when it is brightly lit with Christmas tree lights. The best relationships go unconsummated (Roger and Joan; Peggy and Don) or go awry professionally (Peggy and Freddy whose scenes tonight were wonderful). The worst relationships make unfortunate progress, or at least, “forward movement.” (Glen and Sally; Peggy and her boyfriend; Don and his secretary). Toril, what do you make of the boyish boyfriend who tries to persuade Peggy to follow the example of the “Swedish Way of Love”? Evangeline, just how bad was Don’s behavior with his secretary? (I’m betting that was her resignation letter we saw her typing after exiting Don’s office with her bonus).

Tonight’s new character is Dr. Faye Miller, a motivational researcher. Her appearance is timely: this was the period when, for better or worse, psychology was making its imprint in many fields. In a wonderful example of art anticipating life (or at least life on “Mad Men”), the blog McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has a wonderful send-up by Jim Stallard in which he imagines Sigmund’s daughter, Dr. Anna Freud, consulting Sterling Cooper about her desire to “reposition” her father’s work. This excerpt can only capture a bit of the flavor:

DON DRAPER: Miss Freud, we appreciate your making the trip all the way here from London… I must say, we were surprised to receive your call. Your father’s brand seems as dominant as ever. I wouldn’t think you need to tell the world about his theories…

ANNA FREUD: Well, as you know, we’ve dominated psychology for decades. But lately we’ve begun losing our share of the market to Behaviorism. People want a more comforting interpretation of their lives. …

DRAPER: …[But] people think of Freudian insights as rising above the crowd. It’s an attitude that says, “I’m educated. I’m not a mechanic.” I don’t think you toy with that. … You’re not Norman Vincent Peale.

For my money, there’s too much Freud going on in tonight’s episode for comfort, including the creepy musical image of “mommy kissing Santa Claus” that brilliantly accompanies the final credits. If this is Christmas, thank heaven it comes but once a year.

Toril Moi

The key theme of the episode is announced by Dr. Faye Miller from the motivational research group, an attractive woman whose questionnaire Don refuses to fill in, no doubt because one of the first questions is “How would you describe your father?” His work, and her work, she says, is all about “the difference between what I want and what is expected of me.” As if to bring this out, we are presented with a particularly gloomy episode, in which key characters are stuck in situations they seem powerless to avoid. “I hate it here,” Sally says to Glen, who in return acts out her hatred by vandalizing every room in the house except hers. “I hate parties,” Don says to the nurse next door, before adding “I don’t hate Christmas, I hate this Christmas.”

For Peggy’s boyfriend Sweden is a sexual utopia: the place where “people have sex the moment they feel attracted”, the place where there is no distance between what you want and what’s expected of you. Peggy rightly refuses to fall for the idea that what they do in Sweden has to set the standard for her behavior. She immediately understands that the problem with utopias is that it doesn’t take much for the ideal of the good life to become the new tyrannical norm. No wonder she declares that she doesn’t want to do anything they do in Sweden. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said that desire is endless, that it can never be satisfied. Regardless of what we obtain, we will always fantasize about more. Since there can be no state of permanent satisfaction, there can be no sexual utopia either.

The mystery of Don’s desires and Don’s self-knowledge is the fuel that keeps “Mad Men” going. The distance between what he wants and what is expected of him is hard to gauge, probably because he doesn’t really know what he wants, or who he is. Or does he know a lot more than we do? Can he be unaware that his secretary is in love with him? She is radiant every time she looks at him, she sits at her desk shining like a beacon and allows herself to have sex with him although she must know that he is in a state of semi-drunken stupor. The next morning, when he makes it very clear that she must abandon all hope of a relationship, using the Christmas bonus to make her feel like a call-girl, it is as if he has turned off the light. He has behaved like a cad, but does he know it? My hunch is that he does, and that this episode simply adds fuel to his sense of shame and self-loathing.

But it’s not just Don who is inscrutable. Other characters too require the audience to work quite hard to figure out what they think and feel. At the very end of the episode, Peggy sleeps with the boyfriend. The “old-fashioned” Freddy’s advice was: “If you want to marry him, don’t sleep with him.” I think Peggy turns the advice on its head: she slept with him because she didn’t want to marry him. The boyfriend who has cast himself as sexually experienced, takes her to be a virgin. (“I want to be your first”). After what he takes to be the earth-shattering experience of having sex with him, he asks whether she feels transformed. She doesn’t answer. Given that we know that she has had a child, and also had a passionate love affair, she must be judging his self-satisfied inexperience rather harshly. But we note that she says nothing: while I imagine that she is judging the man, I can’t be sure. I am sure though, in this relationship the woman knows more, sees more and understands more than the man. (Joan’s marriage is another example.)

Alan Brinkley

In Sunday’s New York Times, Katie Roiphe writes about the show with a nostalgic attraction to the “messiness” and bad behavior of the “Mad Men” era. There are a lot of attractive things about the fifties and early sixties that are worth remembering – the excitement of the new American world emerging out of the Depression and war, a nation embracing its image of its own greatness, the emergence of so many people from provincialism and poverty and oppression and joining the new prosperous middle-class world. But those are not the things that the “Mad Men” mostly represent. Their bad behavior is what makes the show so riveting. But I don’t think many of us would agree that they are really having fun.

This is a series mostly about men, none of whom seem to be very happy or particularly admirable. Women, according to many of the assumptions about this era, are supposed to be lonely, frustrated, and unfulfilled. But some of the strongest and most capable characters in the show are women: Peggy, who may not be making good choices but appears nevertheless to be strong enough to rebound; and Joan, who enhanced her career by having an affair with Roger Sterling, but who has emerged as one of the strongest and most capable figures in the show, far more powerful than her weak and whiny husband. The significant exception is Betty, a Bryn Mawr graduate and former fashion model, who – true to “The Feminine Mystique” — is filled with frustration, anger, and disappointment, stuck in the suburbs.

In the first episode of the fourth season, Don Draper seemed first to have hit bottom and then, with his upbeat Wall Street Journal interview, seemed also to have renewed his engagement with his career and his work. But in episode two, the downward spiral of his personal life appears to continue. One of the most sordid of the many incidents in Don’s sordid life is his casual sex (bordering on rape) with his secretary, who comes to deliver the keys he left behind. The next day in the office he is obviously ashamed and greets her with awkward coolness. His Christmas “bonus” to her is 0 in cash, which she must feel is payment for sex – even though he apparently prepared it for her before their encounter in his apartment. Don is not alone in this train wreck. His daughter is miserable and confides with Glen, the young neighbor who is already en route to delinquency. He trashes the Draper kitchen as if to symbolize the trauma of his own parents’ divorce. Roger Sterling’s new marriage is a disaster waiting to happen. In the office, the partners are tyrannized by the homosexual homophobic Lucky Strike heir, whom everyone despises but to whom they must kowtow. The only person who seems to have even a modestly successful relationship is Pete Campbell, even though he betrayed his wife even before their wedding (and later again with a neighbor’s au pair), fathered a child that he immediately abandoned, and undermined his wife’s desire for a child. But there is something attractively charming and needy about Pete, despite his ambition and arrogance, and his wife is one of the most likeable characters in the show.

The episode is in many ways even darker than the very dark first episode. How much darker can it get?

Evangeline Morphos

“I don’t hate Christmas; I hate this Christmas,” Don Draper tells his next door neighbor, an attractive and spunky nurse, who is trying to get him to bed.

As you point out, Walter, it’s been a bad holiday season—that’s for sure.  The first episode of season 4 has the secretaries speculating that Don Draper will be eating his ham alone; and we see a miserable Thanksgiving dinner at the home of Betty’s new in-laws, where Sally, unhappy and missing her father, throws up at the table. But episode 2 begins with a note of hope. Don’s secretary knocks at his office door, asking to come in “Good time? Bad time?”  “Yes,” he answers.  The secretary sits down to read a letter from Sally. She has addressed the letter to “Santa”, in order to “keep up the roose” for her brother. Don and his secretary both smile at the precociousness, innocence, and misspelling of the thought. The letter contains a list of gifts she and her brothers want for Christmas. Don is touched—especially by her coda “But most of all, I want you to be here Christmas morning and give it to me—but I know you can’t be.”

But what do people want–really want—and what do they deserve?   Bert Cooper has hired a “motivation research group” to advise the firm. As Don Draper and the others gather around the conference table, Dr. Faye Miller passes out questionnaires for them to fill out. “The point of these questions,” she says “is to get at what people really want, instead of what they say they do.”  She then asks everyone to  “take a cookie…everyone should be rewarded for their time.”

It’s no wonder Don Draper walks out of the session. And not just because one of the questions is about how he feels about his father—that’s too obvious. Don doesn’t buy into the Freudianism any more than you do, Walter. Don knows all too well what people really want; and that isn’t the point of what he does. I wonder if he is more bothered by the transactional nature of what you need to do to “deserve” a cookie?

Later in the episode, Peggy’s date is urging her to have sex with him.”I want this, too” she says. After making a pitch about how the Swedish do it whenever they want to—he agonizes about how long he’s been waiting. “I’m sorry you feel you’ve put in the time,” Peggy curtly answers. In a last attempt to seduce her, he says, “I brought you cookies.” No, you can’t always get what you deserve—or feel you deserve. No mater how many cookies you’re offered. But, can you get what you want?

You can if you are Lee Gardner, Jr.—the head of Lucky Strike. Lee wants to come to a Madison Ave. Christmas party; and the firm jumps on it—transforming what was to be a modest celebration into a “Roman orgy.” Roger even encourages Joan to wear the red dress with the bow in the back—they one that makes her “look like a present.” We see her later at the party, bow bopping on her hips as she leads the conga line.   As much fun as Lee seems to be having, we know—and Don knows–that all the red dresses in the world are not what interests him.

Don had promised his secretary a bonus—even if he has to take care of it himself.  Don hands her the bonus in an achingly embarrassing scene the morning after the Christmas party, after they slept together.  I disagree with Alan that this was a “rape” of sorts. We see her slip off her heels and lean back for the kiss she no longer protests. The bonus, making love to Don Draper—these are both things she wanted to happen all along; but this isn’t the way she wanted to get them. She didn’t want the bonus to seem transactional. (I’m not sure, Walter, that she is typing her resignation at the end—I think it is back to business as usual.)   Nobody really gets what they want, what they deserve or what they need. But is that because Peggy, Lee, Don’s secretary have not  been honest about what they want in their personal lives?  No one seems to be as honest with themselves as Sally has been: “I want you to be here at Christmas morning…but I know you can’t be.” Sometimes you have to be honest about the things you can’t have.   None of this makes for a good holiday.

But the “roose” as Sally called it, is still operational at the agency. Don had sent his secretary to get the gifts—including the radio Bobby doesn’t think he “deserves” because he broke the freezer. Don even added something special to Sally’s list–something she hadn’t thought to ask for—some Beatles 45s.   Isn’t advertising about creating a need that people don’t even know they have?  Don Draper is doing just that. He leaves the office carrying the load of presents he knows his kids will love.    Roger tells Joan at one point “All I was saying is that this is the office, and that’s life; and this is good and that’s…um…that’s life.” Life does seem better when it’s filtered through advertising; and through Don Draper’s understanding of what people need. The office, at least,  looks very festive as the credits start to roll.

A final thought on the Sally and Glen relationship—Yes, it’s creepy—but not necessarily because of the possible Sally, Betty, Glen triangle. It’s creepy because we’ve seen those phone conversations played out before—between Betty and Henry, and between Don and Suzanne– on the same phone, and using the same ruse. Children dressed up in the emotional costumes of adults—not knowing what they really want from the exchange.

David L. Paletz

This Christmas, a time of celebration becomes, for many of the characters, joyless, even–or particularly–when in the company of family and other people. The episode starts with Henry saying about a Christmas tree “I’m worried that’s gonna hit the ceiling” and becomes gloomier and more disturbing from there on. Glen and a companion vandalize Don’s house. Don “hate[s] this Christmas,” returns to his apartment each night in a drunken state, and has loveless sex with his secretary. Insincere relations, pseudo friendships, and false gaiety make things worse.

Themes I mentioned last week continue. There is the casual mention of current events. This week, two comments show how the older generation is or will soon become out of touch (troglodytes). That “if they pass Medicare, they won’t stop until they ban personal property.” And “civil rights is the beginning of a slippery slope.”

Another repeated theme is the power conflict between the “Mad Men” and the clients. Last week Don asserted his power, albeit self-destructively, by having the men from Jantzen thrown out of the offices. This week it’s the client’s turn. Demonstrated by how Lee Garner, Jr., the man from Lucky Strike, is positioned dominantly in his scenes, fondles women at the party with impunity, and asserts his power by insisting that Roger “put on” the Santa Claus suit. He takes pictures with his gift from the agency of a Polaroid camera, of agency personnel sitting on Santa’s knee. Thereby provoking Roger’s remark, later, quoting his father that “this is the greatest job in the world except for one thing, the clients.”

Notice, incidentally, that the agency personnel rarely express any qualms about the quality, desirability, or effects of the products they are paid to promote. Their art and the science of the new-fangled motivational research are purely instrumental.

The episode is bolstered by the re-emergence of characters, notably Freddie and the creepy Glen (a disturbed boy possibly suggestive of Don as a child); by the expanded roles of existing characters (Don’s secretary Allison); and by the arrival of new characters who may or may not recur.

Most of them are women who enter Don’s life more intimately (Allison) and as potential sex objects (the nurse who is his neighbor). Likely to reappear, I hope, is Dr. Faye Miller, the scientist of Consumer Evaluation. Upon being introduced as having “helped develop the indelible image that has become the standard of feminine hygiene advertising,” she says “it’s right up there with the polio vaccine.” A statement that is humorous and self-deprecating but also reveals her as self-confident, even arrogant.

Relevant to women’s appearance and their standing as sex objects, is Peggy and Freddie’s discussion about how to advertise Ponds, and Peggy’s remark that “nothing makes old ladies look good.”

The use of colors in this Christmas episode is typically adroit. Red, as a color of Christmas, is scattered throughout the scenes: prominently in Joan’s party dress—the one with the bow that makes her look like a present. In contrast, Allison’s party dress is green (meaning go?). Faye’s party dress is black, suggesting danger and perhaps unavailability.

But it is the scene between Allison (Alexa Alemanni) and Don in his office that exemplifies the show’s compelling acting, direction, writing and editing. Don walks into the firm. It is the morning after the night before. Red and green confetti are being swept up. He tells Allison to come into his office. There follows an elliptical dialogue during which he says “I’ve probably taken advantage of your kindness on too many occasions.” To which she replies “excuse me?” He hands her an envelope with her bonus and says “Merry Christmas.” She says “thank you.” She asks “anything else for right now?” He answers “no.” She leaves his office.

During these exchanges, a series of close-ups of Allison, show her facial expressions (and eyes) as she looks at him, go from flirty, to affectionate, to loving, to uncertain, to downcast, to the realization that she has been discarded. She returns to her desk. Don sighs (with relief, resignation, perhaps regret), just as he had sighed when she had left his apartment after sex the previous night.

So what did you think of this episode? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Other articles in this series:

‘Mad Men’: A Conversation (Season 4, Episode 1, ‘Public Relations’)

‘Mad Men’: A Conversation