Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men
. Every Monday I will review an episode of season two, possibly followed by each episode of season three. Later seasons will be covered at another time. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.
Story (aired on August 3, 2008/written by Lisa Albert & Matthew Weiner; directed by Andrew Bernstein): The strange, strained relationship of Don Draper and Pete Campbell takes a new twist in "Flight 1", although they only have two scenes together - one of them quite short. In the first scene, Pete stumbles into Don's office as if in a daze. Earlier that morning, everyone in the office huddled around a radio in stunned silence, listening to news of an American Airlines crash into Jamaica Bay off Long Island. Before long, jokes broke the mood and Pete pitched in a few of his own, but at this moment he isn't laughing. We don't know why yet, although we may suspect: he's just come off a phone call with his brother. As he walks out of his corner office, everyone is carrying on as normal yet there's a slightly eerie tinge to the character's point of view shot, suggesting a heightened yet vaguely disoriented awareness (I thought maybe his reaction implied that his wife was pregnant, which says something about Pete I suppose). Then Pete tells Don, and no one else, that his father was on that flight. Don pours a drink, offers advice ("Go home. Be with your family," and above all, "Do what you're supposed to do"), and a reminder of the Dick Whitman affair as Pete asks if Don would go to his family's side if his father died. Don says yes, and Pete narrows his eyes in an oddly-timed bout of curiosity and queries, "You
would?"
Their second scene follows another uncomfortable (how often that adjective arises) encounter between Pete and a co-worker. Duck is chomping at the bit to chase American Airlines as a new client; a contact at the company has tipped him off that they're seeking a new direction after the disaster. Don - despite bringing Duck to Sterling Cooper a few episodes ago - has clearly developed a hostile position towards Duck (and vice versa), only heightened when he's forced to dump Mohawk Airlines, a smaller rival whom he'd personally cultivated. In a cynical move delivered with graceless manipulation (a specialty of his) Duck visits Pete's office to offer his condolences, flatter him, and invite him to participate in the upcoming American meeting. Pete declines the awkward offer but we can see that he's adrift - he never got along with his father, isn't sure how he's even supposed to react to the patriarch's death, and turns to Don for some sort of guidance. But Don is in a foul mood and sharply shoos Pete away when he wanders into Don's office for the second time in several days. Had he let Pete speak, perhaps a plan could have formulated to save the relationship with Mohawk and stop Pete from going down this new road. Instead, the young man appears at Duck's meeting after all, unannounced and willing to work which shocks and impresses the American rep Shel Keneally (Vaughn Armstrong). Although Pete clearly just saved a deal that might have cost Duck his job, he's also revealed that he's much better at playing this game (or at least playing with a much stronger hand) than the senior adman - who looks both nervous and relieved at this turn.
Elsewhere in the office, Joan snarks at Paul when she discovers he's dating Sheila (Donielle Artese), a black woman who works at a New Jersey grocery store, and Paul gets revenge by posting Joan's real birthday in the copy room - revealing that she's actually in her early thirties. At home, Don and Betty have friends over to drink and play cards, and Betty vents about her son's propensity to cheat and lie (he traced a picture of George Washington which he passed off his own drawing and soaked in the praise, which she finds reprehensible). Peggy, meanwhile, visits her own family homestead, where she is guilt-tripped by a Catholic mother Katherine (Myra Turley) and quietly resented by the sibling, Anita (Audrey Wasilewski), she left behind in her own rise up the professional ladder. There are hints of why she's there, beyond just dropping off a vacuum cleaner and saying hello to her mother and sister who are living a world away over the East River. A baby bib hangs from the wall near some cups and as she's about to leave, her sister asks, "Don't you even want to see it?" And so Peggy peeks behind a closed door to glance at a sleeping infant. The next day in church, her sister (quite pointedly) drops the baby off on Peggy's lap as she and her mother go up to communion, and Peggy stays behind. The child instantly begins crying and Peggy's anxiety rises. Both she and Pete are flooded by confused emotions when their relationships to their own kin aren't what they're supposed to be.
My Response:
