"Home/Work: Some Things Never Change"
Written by Michael Berube (Penn State)
First things first, let me say how great it is to see so many French-Canadians on the show. And such lovely people! It’s about time, and it makes me proud.
OK, now to business. From the moment Peggy uncorked the phrase “basket of kisses,” Mad Men has been about the women. It has been about other things as well– like, say, advertising and ad men, particularly that Draper fellow – but in “At the Codfish Ball” the professional drama with SCDP and Heinz and the American Cancer Society is but a backdrop to the stories of Megan, Peggy, and Sally ... and Joan and Marie.
We open and close with Sally on the phone to Glenn; we learn within minutes, upon Sally’s arrival in New York, that Sally is quite good at public relations. Indeed, Don has to coax her into explaining how she was the hero of the day, calming her grandmother Pauline, calling the police, elevating her ankle and getting an ice pack for her after she broke her ankle tripping on one of Gene’s toys. Gone is the phone cord that Sally stretched into her room, causing Pauline to fall; in its place is a Sally too proper and too shy to tell everyone how good she was. Megan will offer a grownup version of this crafty self-fashioning at the Heinz dinner, converting her parents’ chilly and chilling dinner with Don into a heartwarming tale of families, love, and beans through the centuries. Gone is the drunken Marie passed out in bed with a lit cigarette still danging from her hand; in its place is a doting mother serving good warm Heinz beans while Don looks on in awe and gratitude.
Earlier in the day, when Roger strode into Don’s office and saw Don and Megan redoing the Heinz campaign, he quipped, “Oh! You two are actually working!” Yes, they were. Don was no longer on what Cooper had called “love leave” – and everything about their relationship is working. Gone are the elaborate sex/office games of “A Little Kiss,” the season’s premiere; gone is the corrosive drama of “Far Away Places,” where their work/romance relationship was twisted by Don into something dark (and yet strangely orange!). Last week, Lauren asked if Don could ever consider Megan a colleague like Peggy. This week, the answer is yes, and then some: for a moment, it looks as if this marriage can really be a working partnership after all, complete with a romantic interlude in the office after hours. And Megan is the only woman at the Heinz dinner not shushed by her husband....
Because ultimately, that’s her father’s job – to shush her, to take her brilliant PR work at the Heinz dinner and reduce it to a “big bean success.” At the moment, we don’t know enough about Emile to know whether his disappointment in his daughter is sincere: it may be that he truly believes she has given up, chosen a life of unearned luxury over the life of struggle in pursuit of her dreams (and these would involve acting, we presume? or something else?). Or it may be that he is a bitter, pompous, financially comfortable old man who hides his misogyny and his anger behind a veneer of leftist clichés. My money’s on the latter. Megan is a fine actress: she has already played all the roles, from unflappable mom to smoldering sex kitten, necessary to land Don and keep him at her side; now at the Heinz dinner she has demonstrated a talent for improv, and for inspired lying, that would make any performer proud – or any fiction writer.
Emile’s response to Pete’s explanation-by-performance of what an accounts manager does all day has tipped us off that Emile, like anyone who’s just gotten a manuscript rejected, is susceptible to a little simple flattery. And Emile’s remark at the outset – that Don’s manners are “studied” – lets us know that his brand of leftism does not prevent him from inhabiting the position of the aristocrat who can sneer at the arriviste. So I’m reading Emile skeptically for now. But we do know this much: for some reason, Megan couldn’t fully inhabit her smashing success with the Heinz pitch, much to Peggy’s puzzlement. Surely Emile is that reason. For Megan, apparently, some things never change.
So Peggy’s narrative gives us a tense home/work relation we know is not going to work for her; we already know that patriarchy isn’t working out for her in general, as her mother’s “three cats and then you’re done” life plan for spinsterhood reminds her that for traditionalists, there is no legitimate form of coupledom outside of marriage. Megan’s narrative seems to be an unqualified home/work triumph that wins the heart – and the respect – of her husband, but turns out to be a prelude to her deflation by her father, who seems driven to direct vitriol at the women in his life (and to sob over the phone to his latest mistress, a graduate student). Joan, meanwhile, reminds Peggy that the marriage license can be trumped by other pieces of paper; indeed, the last time we saw Greg, Joan was ordering him out of her life and reminding him that he had raped her in the Sterling Cooper offices. And Marie ... Marie drinks herself into oblivion in her first scene, and goes down on Roger as payback for Emile’s affair in her last. Marie’s only pleasure seems to come from her repartée with Roger, who has become only more charming – and grounded! – after his acid trip.
Sally had begun the evening in go-go boots and makeup. Her father nixed those, later assuring her that someday she will wear makeup – but not tonight. But by the end of the evening, when Sally has reported to Glenn that the city is “dirty,” one imagines that she is somewhat less eager to take her assigned place in the sexual economy of adolescence and adulthood.
