Mad Men Season 5 Episode 3: Tea Leaves

 Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor at The Gadfly Press and wishes he was Don Draper.

 Mandy Lafond is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Lawrence University, studying philosophy with a minor in Asian studies.  She’s currently writing a thesis on postmodernist film theory and Jean Baudrillard. In her spare time she likes philosophizing, playing with her pet rabbit and reading Wikipedia for fun.

Mandy:

After Betty's (or should I say Morticia's?) absence from last week's premiere, last night's episode was fairly Betty-centric.  In a strange turn of events, I actually found myself feeling sympathetic towards my usual object of hatred in light of her cancer scare.  Strangely enough, Betty, when she can’t find Henry, calls Don for comfort, asking him "say what you always says." Calling her by his old pet name Birdy, Don reassures her it's going to be ok.  Now, I know that she is the mother of his children, but their relationship does still seem strangely intimate.  In some weird way, Betty still seems to be dependent on Don.  Even Megan seems to think so when she tells Don, "She just needs something to call you about."

Back at SCDP, Mohawk Airlines is back in the picture, meaning SCDP needs a new copywriter dedicated exclusively to them for weekly copy. Peggy is put in charge of interviewing the potential candidates by Roger, and she's intrigued by the portfolio of one Michael Ginsberg, who upon entering the office proceeds to insult Peggy by thinking she's the secretary.  "Is Don a real person?" Michael asks, "Because I'd really like to meet him." Despite having no knowledge of Don's true identity, Michael's question gets at the very heart of Mad Men. Who is Don Draper? And, although Michael's oddball ways and obnoxious behavior irks Peggy, Don seems to like him. While Michael has limited advertising experience, having stayed at one agency for a while and then jumped around for short stints at other agencies, I think Don really identifies with him. This is, in part, a matter of his changing his demeanor in the interview with Don, which Peggy makes note of after his hiring.  After all, Don himself had a natural gift for advertising but no real experience when he was "discovered" by Roger Sterling. I think Don may take on a mentor role to Michael, which could cause conflict with Peggy.  When Pete announces Mohawk's return to SCDP however, it really becomes clear that this is a new era for the firm, and Michael just might play a crucial role in that.

            Joe:

            This episode has a strong thematic byline that goes through the whole episode, and will most likely be the main feature of the season. As Roger puts it, “When is everything going to get back to normal?” The episode starts with two very important images, Betty’s children trying to zip her into her dress and Don zipping up the back of Megan’s dress. Something about Mad Men that is not always up to par is its use of symbolism, and this is another case of being hit in the head by a mallet labeled “SYMBOLISM!”. I believe we are supposed to see this as a matter of highlighting Don’s newfound devotion to Megan and her ability to engage him in a way that is less grating and subservient then the former Mrs. Draper, including making Don attempt his French with her mother. But let’s focus on Betty first.

Betty’s cancer scare is an interesting look at how this woman thinks of herself and ultimately the difficulty she has in finding happiness in anything. Her weight gain (a convenient byproduct of January Jones’s real life pregnancy) and medical scare serves to highlight that she is no longer the young, beautiful, and trendy woman on the show. As the doctor says, she is now middle-aged (also his use of the phrase, “Oh I don’t like that” should serve as a model of exactly how to not have bedside manner). Ultimately the medical concerns are unfounded and the nodule is found to be benign, but two very interesting things happen while she is contemplating her own mortality. First I’ll address the dream sequence, which seems to have quite a bit of weight in its sparse symbolism. Of course we all can see the dark attire is a portent of death but what is really striking about the scene is Sally. She gets up from the table and turns Betty’s chair over and sets it on the table, exactly like I remember doing in school (was this the same thing people did in that time period at the end of the day?). I read this as a subconscious demonstration of both Betty’s fear of death and her childlike disposition. The other occurrence is the visit from the tea leaves reader who tells her that she is a rock for the people around her, which Betty realizes is very much not the case.

As you mentioned Betty’s first instinct after being unable to find Henry is to call Don and have him reassure her, like he once did when they were married. This of course comes back to reverberate in multiple ways, this first of which, I suspect, may not be purposeful. If you look at the layout of Betty and Henry’s bedroom, it seems to be the same exact configuration as the room she and Don had in the former Draper household. It even looks, to me, as if they may have just repurposed that old set for this season’s scenes at the Francis’s abode. Also, we get to see Henry’s consternation when Don calls to make sure Betty is ok, quickly dismisses him, and tells Betty that he wasn’t talking to anyone (I would also be remiss, because I can’t find an appropriate spot to mention this, to not say that Henry’s dismissal of George Romney as “a clown” was brilliant commentary on the current election). But now that we have the Francis’s storyline out of the way, how about we get into the concert and other goings on at SCDP?

            Mandy:

Season 5 of Mad Men seems to be all about changes, and thankfully the show's writers never felt the need to beat us over the head with "The Times They are a-Changin'", unlike the writers of 2003's forcefully saccharine Kennedy-era family drama American Dreams.  The changes are apparent though, between Betty's weight gain, the new black secretary (cleverly named Dawn), and Don's adventure to a Rolling Stones concert where he is completely out of place.  Don Draper, probably the envy of every man watching Mad Men, suddenly looks like a complete and utter square at a Stones concert. While Harry smokes a joint and tries to fit in with the mostly teenage crowd, Don stands aloof.  "You need to relax," a girl of about 15 years old tells Don.  She then removes his tie and puts it on herself, to which Don asks if she'd seen that on TV.  The generational difference here is highlighted in a conversation between Don and the young girl, in which Don expresses his concern for the younger generation after she challenges him on why his generation doesn’t want to have fun.  Forget Roger, perhaps even Don himself is becoming obsolete in the face of a radical cultural revolution with lax sexual mores, unrestricted drug use and rock and roll.  Don is of a more reserved generation, and this episode reminded me of his encounter with the carefree sexually liberated Joy in season 2.  Don is fairly open minded compared to other characters on the show, but even he can't tolerate the openness about sex in Joy's family. But, back to SCDP.

Roger may be on his way out in terms of his importance at SCDP, but his zingers aren't going anywhere.  What does he have to say about hiring a Jewish guy? "Turns out everyone's got one these days." While Roger's a member of the old guard, he's aware times are changing and to remain relevant, he just might have to put aside his prejudices. While Roger struggles to stay important to the firm throughout the episode, Pete Campbell puts the final nail in the proverbial coffin in his announcement that Mohawk is returning to SCDP.  Though it was Roger who sealed the deal with Mohawk over copious amounts of drinks ("I met with two and by the end I swear there were three."), Pete publicly gives himself most of the credit and essentially announces that he will be taking over Roger's role at the firm.  "Everything he knows, I'll know," says Pete, gesturing to Roger.  For Roger, this is finally a sign he's being replaced and he can't handle it and storms out. "That's the last guy I hired," he tells Peggy.  Roger just can't seem to accept the fact that Pete's moving up in the world, and he's on his way out.  However, I predict that this season we'll see the death of Joan's husband Greg in Vietnam, and Roger and Joan may rekindle their relationship, which could take his mind off things at the office.  I also suspect that we may see Peggy become a junior partner at SCDP this season, and that Michael will become an extremely important figure at the office, maybe even becoming romantically entangled with Peggy.  Whatever the case may be, the changes are coming, and they're coming fast.

            Joe:

While you mention Roger’s recognition of the role Michael can play at the agency you didn’t mention what he said after, “like, always darkest before Dawn over there”. While Roger may recognize that the world is changing he doesn’t see the directions society is going. Roger has clearly progressed in his views towards the Jewish people since the first season, when he had to search all the way to the mail room to find a Jewish employee to fake being a copy artist to make Rachel Menken feel more at home in the agency. Between this quip and his callousness towards the African American community’s plight in the season opener, we see he has become aware of one group, but is not yet aware of another. It’s interesting to see that Stan’s warning to Peggy that she doesn’t want to bring in her own replacement pays interest not to Peggy (at least so far) but to Pete’s usurpation of Roger. Although, there is room to worry about Peggy, watching Michael modulate his behavior from wisecracking, “That’s what they said about Mein Kampf, kid’s got talent.”, to making himself into an eager worker who tells Don that he thinks SCDP is on the way up, and lastly to the penultimate scene with his father at home, where he seems particularly subdued and quiet.

            I had a lot of fun watching Don and Harry’s interactions this episode. From watching Don dismissively tell him that he was not going to have dinner with him (at which point I was sure Megan had told Don about what she had overheard Harry saying, now I’m not so sure) to seeing Don’s “the man” act while Harry tries and fails to understand and join in with people who can’t be that much younger than him, looking like everyone’s friend’s hip dad. Then the wonderful aftermath of the concert with Harry accidentally signing an act from Rhode Island “The Trade Winds” (my research says) whom he mistook for The Rolling Stones.

Now that I think about it, Harry had some of the best characterization this episode, telling Don that since he had kids he needs to eat first as he scarfs down twenty hamburgers outside of his house and, the next morning, earnestly saying to Don, “Saturday night was fun” to which Don replies abjectly “…ok”. But, I think the most important thing to take out of the concert had next to nothing to do with it; rather it was the scene the next morning that summed up the episode. When Don tells Megan that he doesn’t think he can make it out to Fire Island, Megan replies by highlighting the hypocrisy that he has enough energy to go to the concert but not enough to visit with her friends. Mortality hangs over this and asks us; maybe these mad men are too tired and sick from the party the night before to hang out with this new generation.

Where do you think Mad Men is headed? Will they do a crossover with Breaking Bad, seeing as Betty can't get any amphetamines from her doctor? Are our friends at SCDP becoming dinosaurs? Let us know in the comments.