Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 2: “You’re the kind of man who doesn’t want to take the test.”

Alan Sepinwall

I cringed mightily watching Don pull Allison to her, and then seeing her reciprocate. As I've talked about before, being Don Draper's secretary is not easy. Peggy was okay but mostly distracted by personal issues (she's a better protege than Gal Friday), Joan great but temporary, Lois a disaster, and Jane more interested in finding a Sterling Cooper partner to sleep with. We've seen with Allison - and were reminded early in this episode with Sally's letter to Santa - that she's that rare creature who can meet Don's professional needs, understand his moods and perform her demanding job with a minimum of drama (though she does understandably get choked up at the postscript to Sally's letter). Allison is probably the most functional relationship Don has in his life right now (Peggy still is a target for abuse, after all), so when Don pulled her towards the couch, I all but begged them to stop before he screwed it up.

But bad as I expected things to go, I never expected anything quite as horrible as Don's behavior the next morning, when he shocks Allison with how much their encounter didn't happen, as far as he was concerned, then hands her the envelope with her holiday bonus. Dick Whitman, who grew up with the nickname "whore-son," is so fixated on keeping his personal life walled off from his professional life that he makes Allison feel like his whore. He doesn't close the door and apologetically suggest their night together was nice but a bad idea in hindsight; he just acts like it never happened and gives her a hundred bucks, cash. And unlike some other incidents where we see that Don's weird pathology allows him to forget about the thing that he wants to erase - see, for instance, his initial confusion when Peggy asks him to repay her for the bail money from the car crash with Bobbie Barrett - his expression after a humiliated Allison leaves his office makes it abundantly clear that Don knew exactly what he was doing and feels guilty about it. Just not guilty enough to have stopped himself.

This is among the lowest things we've ever see Don do, down there with ordering Adam out of his life and saying "you people" to Sal. We understand by now Don's need to push people away at all costs, and in hindsight it's not surprising that he would treat Allison in a way that ensures she would never, ever approach him that way again, nor tell anyone else about an encounter that ultimately mortified her so. That doesn't make it any easier to watch, though, and it's a credit to Matthew Weiner (here writing the script with Tracy McMillan) and Jon Hamm that they'll take the character there, and to Alexa Allemanni's acting that we'd feel so badly for such a minor character.

Tim Goodman

Now, instead of a lonely, disillusioned kid, Glen is more aggressively odd kid. He sees Sally at a Christmas tree farm, dumps a bunch of cold, hard facts on her about divorced parents, then says he'll call her (which he does, twice, before ransacking her place with another young accomplice). Only Freud can delve into that one, but there seemed to be a lot of misplaced sexual aggression. And the same might be said - with a lot more grown-up themes like dominance - about Lee Garner Jr.'s return to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. He did more than just flaunt his power at the office Christmas party. He turned cruel and sadistic. (Sal, you're better off wherever you are.)

"It all comes down to what I want versus what's expected of me," cites Dr. Faye Miller, the smart, beautiful researcher who understands the psychology of demographics. Don didn't really buy her psycho babble, but agreed after that line that she was right. And she certainly nailed Don in one sentence. He's always battled what he wants and what's expected of him. He can't seem to find happiness. Or, more importantly, love.

S.T. Vanarisdale

At least Peggy has some dignity. Or whatever it is you call her shielding her sexual history from handsy boyfriend Mark, whose efforts to relive Peggy of her “virginity” bear rather smug, revolting fruit later in the episode. Her nooners with Duck Phillips were so much more rewarding, interruptions via presidential assassination notwithstanding.

Her professional tangles with Freddy, meanwhile, have their own implications. They’re fairly on-the-nose, stock Mad Men gender politics — Freddy wants an aging female star for the Pond’s campaign, Peggy wants to skew the demographics younger, Freddy stereotypes (“You might get married!”), Peggy stereotypes back (“You and your old typewriters and your desperate spinsters!”) — but their resolution suggests Peggy is indeed the superior politician. That’s quite the rebound from last week, when her creative wiles gave us the infamous Sugarberry Ham Brawl of 1964.

And it’s definitely a step ahead of virtually everyone else in the office. There was no more glaring evidence than the Christmas party — I mean, did you see Lee Garner Jr. whip Roger into playing Santa Claus? Or Lane’s desperate trawl for approval when giving Lee his gift Polaroid? Or the emasculated husbands in a circle, supplemented by Don, whose plunging creds have already been established? It’s true that Joan, with Peking House on speed-dial and her fierce conga-line leadership, wields the more redoubtable authority. But in her cagey, modulated (and sure, occasionally false-modest) way, Peggy slashes through one Y-chromosome after another in her march through the Testosterone River Delta.

Keith Phipps

Mad Men doesn’t use songs accidentally and it especially doesn’t end episodes with carelessly chosen songs. It’s always puzzled me that “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” became a holiday standard. That doesn’t mean it’s not a great song. But, unlike most Christmas songs, it’s not a song for kids. In fact, it’s a song that essentially mocks kids for believing in Santa. There are probably ways to explain its lyrics to children who still believe in Santa, but they involve piling a lie on top of another lie.

A songwriter named Tommie Conner—who penned several other Christmas songs and something called “Never Do A Tango With An Eskimo”—wrote it in 1952 and a kid named Jimmy Boyd, who went on to enjoy a fairly long career in show business, recorded it that same year. It was a hit again years later for the Jackson 5, as fronted by a young Michael Jackson. But there’s another tradition of versions by grown-ups, like the sexy Ronettes version on Phil Spector’s Christmas album and the one that closes out this week’s episode. I’m not sure who’s singing the version here—maybe country singer Molly Bee—but like most versions performed by adults, it takes on a different meaning in a grown-up voice. Listening to it requires buying into the illusion of an adult singing from a child’s perspective while still recognizing that it’s not a child singing at all. It means believing an illusion and recognizing the truth at the same time.

That double consciousness must be familiar to ad execs, who have to create a fantasy to sell a product and, to some degree at least, believe that fantasy for it to work. It’s a state of mind that creeps into private lives as well.

Me

• Roger Sterling has fantastic taste in dresses.
• A bit of a reversal for Roger: after goading Joan into wearing the red dress that "makes (Joan) look like a present," he is forced by Lee Garner, Jr. to put on the red Santa Claus suit. Given what we know about the characters, it is safe to assume that there was a sexual overtone to both events, but whereas with Roger it seems playful, Lee comes off as a sadistic creep. behold the power of tone.
• Harry Crane doesn't want anybody cheating off of his personality test. Also, he LOVES cookies.
• Freddy Rumsen is back! Let the zipper chorus commence its 1964 season. Is it too much to hope for a rendition of "A Hard Day's Night?" Of course, this being Mad Men, the first thing anyone does is to offer him a drink.
• Lee Garner, Jr. is the human manifestation of the perils of having all your eggs in one basket.
• Betty might want to have "the talk" with Sally. If she doesn't, the burden of explanation is likely to be shouldered by Glen.
• The next five years are going to hit Bert Cooper like a freight train.
• I cannot wait for Sally Draper's inevitable hippie rebellion (good band name).
• "Did you enjoy the Fuhrer's birthday?" "May he live for a thousand years!"
• "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
• More Joan, please.

Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 1: "John! Marsha!"

First the real critics, then a few tangentially connected thoughts, observations, and questions from me.

Alan Sepinwall

A lot of TV series do status quo-altering season finales, then take a handful of episodes at the start of the next year to reset things to the default, and “Mad Men” could have very easily done that here. Betty has already taken Don back once and could do it again, and while the new firm lacks Kinsey and Sal and some others, enough of the familiar faces have relocated there that it could easily become, as Weiner puts it in our interview, “Sterling Cooper in a new office.”

But even though Don expertly throws Henry’s words back at him by telling him, “Believe me, Henry, everybody believes this is temporary,” it’s clear that the end of the Draper marriage, and the professional changes going on at the new firm, are permanent. “Public Relations” signals a show that’s looking forward, not back.

Tim Goodman

It could be that Don having to be so out front at the new firm - more public, less the corner office creative genius than the entire face of the company, makes him so uncomfortable he's off his game. Bert and Roger, who have been through the tough times themselves, make it very clear to Don that the Advertising Age interview was a disaster. You're the face of the company, Don. You're in the spotlight. So start dancing. And keep smiling. This, of course, is not what he's cut out for. But it's just another big change for Don. He's dealing with Betty, who's being vindictive and cold, and still living in the house they shared (which is bugging Henry, too). Work life and personal life not going great? Faux perfection that you mastermined (sic) all gone to hell? Then what does it all mean? Who are you and what are you? (Oh, and by the way, the world is shifting under your feet, incrementally...) Yeah, Don's adrift. But it's nothing some cash and a few slaps can't temporarily fix. Dark days ahead? Oh, you bet.

What also stood out is the level of Betty's bitterness, meanness and unhappiness. Now, everybody's known that was present. But in the past, Don was the easy answer to explain it all away. Now that Betty has her Dream Marriage version 2.0, what do we see? That she's a cold, perhaps unloving mother. That in under a year she's got Henry wondering what the hell he got into. But as interesting as some of that will be going forward, the bigger story here is what creator Matthew Weiner will do with Betty. She's in danger of being one-dimensionally irrelevant. Either that's a bold creative decision, or the writers need to give her something different (like Don's face-slapping, but, yes, different). She needs to either be redeemed in some small way, or her inherently unlikable nature needs to maximized in some monstrous way.

Keith Phipps

Peggy’s the person who’s changed most notably over the last year. I’m not sure which came first: the new hairstyle or the added confidence, but both are hard to miss. She drinks at work like the boys and, when asked to come up with a tagline, goes into a Don-like trance as she searches for inspiration. She bosses Joey around and tells him when he’s gone too far. And she’s not afraid to get creative to sell ham and wants credit for her idea, even if it encounters a minor disaster along the way. Most significantly, she’s standing up to Don at every turn now. He bullies her in front of her “fiancé” but hears about it later. And she provides a devastating mixture of admiration and chiding when she reminds Don that everyone at SCDP is there because of him and out of a desire to make him happy. It cuts enough that he leaves her out of the meeting, but I don’t think Peggy and Don are done sorting out the new boundaries of their relationship.

That’s a problem Don has on the homefront, too. Betty has a new life, but it’s still tangled up with his. The issue of her not leaving the house is more than a matter of convenience or wanting the best for the kids, no matter how much she protests. Despite her marriage to Henry, she’s still defining herself in relation to Don, even if now she’s mostly acting to spite him.

Stray comments from me

The 11 month jump forward to November of 1964 seems to signal the scuttling of creator Matthew Weiner's previously stated intention to do Mad Men as a 5 season show that ended in 1970.

Will we ever see Paul or Kent again? What about Sal?

Not enough Joan.

Roger Sterling continues to get all the best lines. Stunningly, his mid-life crisis marriage appears to be the most stable romantic relationship in the Mad Men universe. What were the odds on that? He's also very familiar with his client's swimsuit catalog.

Don bombed the last pitch on purpose, right?

Two Days To Go!!!

Get excited.