Mad Men Season 5 Episode 13: The Phantom

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

Another season of Mad Men comes to an end and we see some likely changes in the shows dynamic starting to emerge. Also, Pete Campbell gets punched in the face - twice! In one of the more glaring symbolic baseball bats to the head Don Draper starts the episode with a toothache and it only gets worse.

                 

The lovely Marie Calvet is visiting and she takes quite an interest Megan’s actorly ambitions. While Don thinks that his toothache will eventually go away (the way he treats all problems) Megan seems to think that her lack of employment will go away too. When she receives the results of a screen-test she’s disheartened at the seeming lack of concerted effort on the agencies part to market her reel correctly and Marie tells her that they feed on hopeless people (she clarifies that she means people’s hopes, but it’s obvious she meant it the first way).            

  

Pete is dealing with his own disappointments as Beth Dawes appears on the train with her husband on the morning train and Joan has to fend off Harry’s curiosity about the potential second floor that the agency must buy. Don, likely a little drunk from the alcohol he puts on his sore tooth, sees his brother Adam leaving down the elevator as he arrives at the office. Obviously Lane’s death has hit him on two levels, first the guilt over Lane and second over the guilt he feels at not being there for Adam before he met a similar fate. 

The firm seems to be suffering from a lack of a womanly touch and Ginsberg and Stan seem to be suffering the most from a lack of Peggy, blowing it with some clients. Speaking of Peggy, we get to see that her new work situation isn’t all that she thought it would be, but she seems to be doing fine at her new office. She’s bidding for the chance to market those new “lady cigarettes” and in the process she is getting a free trip to “scenic” Virginia to tour the factory.

             Pete gets a call at his office from Beth Dawes and we begin to understand why she is rather listless and lacking of affectation (maybe she isn’t a bad actor?). She is in the city to get preevaluated for what turns out to be another entry in her multiple times getting shock therapy and hopes to spend one more time with Pete in case she loses some of her memory in the course of treatment. Lane’s death hangs over all of this with the constant mentions of depression and the camera shot of Lane’s empty chair in the partner’s meeting. Pete, eager to see Ms. Dawes storms out of said meeting and gives his proxy to Don, to which he responds, drunkenly, “We can do that?”

  Meanwhile Megan decides to steal a commercial role from her blonde actress friend after her friend asks her to convince Don to get her into contention for an advertisement the firm is doing. Megan, realizes that her friend has the right idea and tries to convince Don to get her into the commercial which he decides against because he thinks that she doesn’t want her big break to come just because she is somebody’s wife. Megan’s mother thinks that her career choice is rather ridiculous and she urges her to stop chasing a phantom, Megan doesn’t like this and proceeds to get plastered and behave as if Don thinks that all she should do is wait around for him all day.

   

  Roger has been calling the Draper’s apartment all day and breathing heavily in an attempt to get a hold of Marie. After convincing her to visit him at his hotel Roger tries to convince her to take LSD with him, but she doesn’t want to have to care for him, or anyone for that matter. Don attempts to comfort Lane’s widow by giving back the collateral that Lane had to put into the company after the firms life insurance provides them with a substantial windfall. Lane’s wife is having none of it and chastises Don for filling “A man like that” with ambition. He doesn’t seem to understand her anger and keeps saying how sorry he is for her loss. Even if he doesn’t consciously understand why she is so angry his subconscious seems to because when he acquiesces and finally goes to the doctor, the laughing gas induces a hallucination of Adam (“what are you doing here?” “I lost my job when I died”) who rather unsubtly tells him that it isn’t his tooth that’s rotten. When Don begs him not to leave him Adam tells him that he will “hang around” and follows that up with “get it?”

   Pete visits Beth after her electroshock therapy and she doesn’t realize who he is. What could Pete fear more than being forgotten, the feeling of being so insubstantial to other people that he can be put out of other people’s minds with the slightest shock. Pete gives her a classic “a friend of mine….” dissection of his feelings for her and why he’s so torn up inside. Coming off of this emasculation he confronts Howard about allowing his wife to receive “a temporary bandage on a permanent wound” and it seems that Beth may have a history of adultery by his implied knowledge of her salacious attitude. This of course comes to blows and Pete gets punched in the face and after the two are separated Pete gets into it with one of the railway workers “I am an officer of the new haven line” to which Pete replies, “Well I’m president of the howdy doody circus army.” Then he gets punched in the face again. Upon arriving home to Trudy, who thinks that his bruised face is a result of an automotive accident, she finally decides that he is right, he should have an apartment in the city.

    Don runs into Peggy at the theater and seems to be relieved to see her again. After ruminating about how he has helped her he decides that he should think about helping Megan’s career and he returns to the office and smokes a cigarette (against Dentist’s orders) and watches her screen test. The next morning the Partners visit the floor above the offices to map out how they are going to use the new space and then we cut to the advertisement shoot, where Megan is preparing to star in her first role. Don walks away from the shoot a man apart, sauntering like James Bond directly to a bar, where a woman approaches him because her friend finds him attractive. (I would love to have been in the writer’s room for this montage where somebody was like, “What should we conclude the season with?” “Peggy seeing two dogs humping and Roger’s bare ass?” “Genius!”.) The woman at the bar asks if he’s alone and Don looks up, we know what he’s about to say, and then it cuts to black.

                What can be said about this season of Mad Men? (I intend to write a season long analysis after I rewatch all the episodes this week so watch this space.) At times it was formally daring, comedically inspired, and deeply disturbing. At other times it was too on the nose and risked sinking into melodrama. But I have to say that it was absurdly ambitious, for a show about an advertising agency we are seeing more and more moral disintegration and the increased drama that that brings. I think the way forward for the show is now clearer. My mind is drawn to back to the season opener and Roger saying, “When will everything get back to normal?” It seems that, though things have been shuffled around, the characters are settling back into their old routines. Don seems like he is about to abort the grand one woman experiment by the look in his eyes at the bar. Peggy is ascendant again after having her ambition stifled this season at SCDP. Roger seems to be tripping out to fill the hole that it seems no woman will ever fill. Pete has again been knocked off his perch so now he can feel put-upon and justify his general weaseliness. And last, but not least, Bert Cooper is finally getting an office to hang weird Rorschach-like modern art in.

                What really interests me now is how Don will develop. There is a growing list of people he has harmed either through indifference or a lack of respect: Adam, Lane, Betty, and all of his paramours. Adam’s reappearance of in his mind’s eye seems to suggest that this baggage is hanging on him more and more and you have to wonder if his (seeming) choice to stop trying with Megan is just his nihilistic streak flaring up again. When Don feels guilty or bad he doesn’t move to fix the problem, he seems to always want to make it worse.