for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules
running from August 2021 to February 2022
Mad Men - "New Business" (season 7, episode 9)
Story (aired on April 12, 2015/written by Tom Smuts and Matthew Weiner; directed by Michael Uppendahl): Three women circle Don, and he ends up on the outs with all of them. The woman from Don's past (now distant), Betty Francis, finds him with his sleeves rolled up in her kitchen, making milkshakes for the boys he babysat while she and Henry attended a posh event. She tells him she's decided to get her Master's in psychology at Fairfield University - that people like to come to her to share their problems. Don, however, cannot do this and so as the fancy couple returns, he leaves his own family behind in their cozy kitchen. He and Betty are at peace but they severed their connection long ago and it looks like she wound up with the bigger half of the wishbone. The woman from Don's present (soon-to-be), Megan Draper, comes to New York to make some final moves toward divorce so Don casts the lawyers aside and signs over a check for a cool million after she berates him for being an "aging, sloppy, selfish liar." She is also scheduled to get her last things from his apartment. Her mother, in town to help (and of course judge) her wayward daughter, takes this to mean literally every single item but the carpet, emptying the place completely while Megan attends a disastrous meeting with Harry Crane (she's looking for an agent but he'd rather take her upstairs to the hotel room he's already booked). Worse, Marie invites Roger over to pay the movers' bill and then takes him to bed - defiling as well as robbing Don's abode, as Roger puts it (not that he refuses). By episode's end, Megan's blubbering sister Marie-France (Kim Bubbs), a sad housewife trying to enjoy her momentary escape to the city, informs Megan that their mother is now going to leave their father. "She's been very unhappy for a very long time," Megan scolds. "At least she did something about it."
Finally, the woman from Don's future (he hopes), Diana Baur, is tracked down by Don at another restaurant and invited to his apartment. They spend the night - several in fact - and she spills the beans. She came to New York from Racine, Wisconsin, after flipping a coin (it was Manhattan or San Francisco, and the east won). She was married for twelve years, no children. Well, actually, come morning and her discovery of Sally's empty room, she confesses that she did have a daughter who passed away. And, as a matter of fact, come evening and Don's visit to her own shabby apartment, she reveals that she also does have a second daughter, whom she abandoned in her grief. "I know you think you deserve this," Don insists, realizing that Diana is trying to punish herself. But it isn't clear that Diana views this fate as punishment. She does not want to forget about her dead child in Don's embrace. And so he exits the room and leaves a woman behind for the second time in the ironically-titled "New Business". (Megan, on the other hand, left him alone at the table with her engagement ring, or rather Anna Draper's...which is about all she left him with, as Don will discover when he finally gets home after a long day.) Of course, the episode title is literal as well as ironic, given the more light-hearted subplot about Peggy bringing legendary art photographer Pima Ryan (Mimi Rogers) onto a project. Pima ends up seducing the vulnerable Stan, who attempts and fails to impress the older woman with his own photos of girlfriend Elaine (Erica Piccininni). Pima then proceeds to flirt heavily with an uncomfortable Peggy. The scene in which Peggy and Stan find out they've both been hustled is exquisitely timed and delivered, with copywriter Ed (Kit Williamson) sealing the deal by his bemused reaction. Here we have a wacky threesome (with, perhaps, some important implications) to complement the three-way split that Don encounters in his own lonely odyssey.
My Response:
My Response:
TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS #6 w/ Murder at Teal's Pond author Mark Givens (YouTube & extended PATREON)
Last September, I spoke to David Bushman, co-author of Murder at Teal's Pond: Hazel Drew and the Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks. Although our conversation focused more on his earlier book Conversations with Mark Frost, we did discuss his true crime page-turner which at the time had yet to be released. Now that I've read Murder at Teal's Pond and found it riveting, it's time to talk about the book again with its other author, Mark Givens. I've followed Mark's work for years, since he debuted the podcast Deer Meadow Radio in 2016. That's where he first begin to dig into the century-old murder of Hazel Drew, a young woman living in upstate New York whose unsolved mystery inspired Mark Frost to invent Laura Palmer (Frost's grandmother used to tell him ghost stories about the victim, who supposedly haunted passerby near the pond where she was discovered). After years of extensive research, Mark and David (Givens and Bushman, not Frost and Lynch) uncovered a fascinating portrait not just of Hazel but of the very different worlds where she grew up and traveled between in her final days: the bustling, corrupt city of Troy and the remote, rural community around the Taberton woods. They even drew some conclusions about who might have killed her and why some avenues went unexplored back in 1908. Although the simple idea of a dead girl discovered by a body of water was what got Twin Peaks rolling, it turns out there are many other coincidental similarities, which Mark and I discuss.
The public portion of our conversation, running about thirty-five minutes after my usual introduction/update, is entirely focused on the book's rich texture and how it came together (including disagreements and different areas of interest between the two authors, and how those factored into the final text):
PART 1 on YouTube
The second part, longer than the first (as always) at fifty-five minutes and exclusive to $5/month patrons, continues this focus by discussing the detectives who ultimately came up short in their investigations, the politics of Troy, and other aspects of the book, before concluding with questions about season three, possibilities for future Twin Peaks, and even the early nineties Wiseguy tribute to Peaks, which both Mark and I have covered on our own.
Listen to...
Also listen to Deer Meadow Radio: episodes on Hazel Drew (from before the book was written) + Marilyn Monroe & Wiseguy
Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter 34 (seasons 1 & 2 collaborators): A Candle in Every Window (my video including clips from Wiseguy)
Twin Peaks Unwrapped interview w/ Mark Givens & David Bushman on Murder at Teal's Pond (audio-only video)
The Olympic Films, part 3 of 7: Summer 1992 / 1988 / 1984 / 1980 & Winter 1960 / 1964 / 1968
for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules
running from August 2021 to February 2022
Mad Men - "Severance" (season 7, episode 8 / part 2 premiere)
Story (aired on April 5, 2015/written by Matthew Weiner; directed by Scott Hornbacher): The first half of season seven ended with a spectral Bert Cooper crooning, "The best things in life are free." The second half opens with a very much in-the-flesh model, Cindy (Rainey Qualley), smoldering in a Chinchilla coat and little else while Peggy Lee muses, "Is that all there is?" Don directs her activity while ashing a cigarette into a coffee cup before a larger audience is revealed: a small assembly of eager admen and clients (for Wilkinson razors) gathered in a side room of the SC&P office. The setting is not so glamorous, nor the context as exciting for Don, as we might have imagined but if this is where the tumult of the past decade has landed him he doesn't appear to be complaining. The next scene finds him and Roger in tuxedos, beautiful women dressed to the nines under almost every arm, in a cheap diner where Don laughs about a toaster his stepmother got as a gift in the whorehouse where he grew up. Roger cracks that Don likes to talk about growing up poor to get out of paying the bill, but he's not poor anymore. If Lee's question is pressed, the answer so far seems to be a gentle shrug: "If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze and have a ball..."
Of course, there are seven episodes to go before the final moment (or "final disappointment" as the singer sighs), and Don quickly finds something else to pursue. In this case, it's a sad-eyed waitress named Diana Baur (Elizabeth Reaser) with a John Dos Passos book tucked in her apron pocket. Something about her appears familiar to him but he can't quite place it; intrigued, he returns to the restaurant alone. Silently presuming that he's the one who left a $100 tip (it was actually Roger, as apology for teasing her relentlessly), she meets Don out back for an unexpected quickie in the alley. When he's drawn back a third time, she gives him the boot, gently; he confesses that he's experienced loss recently and saw the dead person in a dream before he heard the news, so Diana tells him, "When someone dies, you just want to make sense out of it. But you can't." And then he's left alone at the counter, on what she's encouraged him to think of as his last visit, pondering the implications of Diana's wisdom.
Don's loss pulls us back into the first season, or rather reminds us of how much time has passed since then. Re-living the fur-draped casting call of the opening scene in his sleep, Don witnesses onetime mistress Rachel Menken parade through that door and gaze in that mirror, encouraging him to rave, "You're not just smooth. You're Wilkinson smooth." At the office, still haunted by this dream, he asks Meredith to call Rachel's workplace and schedule a meeting, ostensibly to discuss a new Topaz pantyhouse strategy (Joan and Peggy are trying to move the product into department stores to contend with rivals). Instead, Don discovers that she left the store months earlier - and died of leukemia just last week. Rattled by this revelation, and what it says about his own subconscious, he visits the apartment where Rachel's friends and family are sitting shiva and runs into Rachel's sister Barbara (Rebecca Creskoff), who is confusingly listed as Barbara Katz, the same married name as Rachel - are their husbands brothers? She has little patience with Don's grief (albeit maybe a little pity for his loneliness), and wants him to know that Rachel "lived the life she wanted to live. She had everything." Don, seeing Rachel's small children, hearing her sister's words, and believing that she carried on better without him than he did without her, can only respond, "Good."
My Response:
This is Don's (half-)season premiere, puncturing long-awaited contentment by opening up old wounds and sending white rabbits across his field of vision. Others have more concrete troubles to navigate. When Peggy and Joan try to push their Topaz strategy with the leering jackasses at McCann Erickson (who work with Marshall Fields, owned by Macy's, and could provide an opportunity), they are humiliated by Dennis Ford (Greg Cromer) in particular - with Joan his favorite target. A tense elevator ride with the two SC&P women finds them turning their weapons on each other, Peggy implying that Joan dresses provocatively and Joan insulting Peggy's looks. Later, Joan will ignore Dennis' calls and go shopping for a shapely dress - might as well lean into her image for the rewards if she can't dispel the trouble it brings her. Peggy attempts to rebound by accepting an invitation to dine with Stevie Wollcott (Devon Gummersall), her co-worker John Mathis' (Trevor Einhorn's) brother-in-law. They get drunk and impulsively make plans to fly to Paris but she can't find her passport, declines his overtures so that this hot date can result in more than a "fling" (though it seems likely it may dissolve into even less than that), and finds herself completely embarrassed by all of it the next day.
Ken's McCann-fueled crisis has the happiest ending - forced out of the now-McCann-owned SC&P by vindictive former employer Ferg Donnelly (Paul Johansson), he tells an intrigued Don that this may be his opportunity to pursue "the life not lived" by becoming a novelist full-time. Cynthia, whose own father just retired from Dow Chemical after a lifetime of corporate service, has certainly been pressuring Ken to do just this, even before the firing. Instead, Ken takes the old man's now open job which means he will be Roger's and Pete's very demanding client going forward. Revenge tastes sweet, even if Ken may be cutting his own dreams short in order to pursue it.
My Response:
Kings Row as TWIN PEAKS CINEMA #9 (podcast)
With the new year comes a new themed miniseries for my Twin Peaks Cinema podcast: "Small Town Blues" (the last series, "What's in a name?" explored Laura, Vertigo, and Sunset Boulevard as seminal influences on Peaks). One of the most fascinating things about the work of David Lynch and Mark Frost is their world creation, the way they explore the social fabric of a complex community. "The bucolic small town with a dark, seamy underside" has been a particular American mainstay for generations, with Lynch's own Blue Velvet preceding Peaks for several years, itself drawing upon melodramatic tropes of fifties cinema. One of the best examples of this "genre" (if we can call it that) may not have had any direct impact on Peaks at all - I don't think Lynch or Frost ever referenced it - but it certainly feels like a kindred spirit. Kings Row explores the old-fashioned charm of nineteenth century life alongside a fascination with (explicit) Freudianism. Its characters cavort in sunny fields and lurk in delipidated old houses; they travel as far afield as Vienna and also venture across the wrong side of the tracks for romance - a shabby, more urban-feeling neighborhood that in some ways feels even further from their home than Europe. Like Twin Peaks, Kings Row contains worlds. Thematically, the connections are quite striking, especially when it comes to Cassandra Tower (Betty Field), a troubled young woman whose aura of mystery and repressed secrets torment the protagonist (Robert Cummings) as he comes of age. Of course Kings Row's lasting legacy was that it provided Ronald Reagan's most acclaimed role and the notorious line that he borrowed to title his memoir (before launching a political career dead set on denying the dark undercurrents that Kings Row unearths beneath America's optimistic topsoil). "Where's the rest of me?"
The Olympic Films, part 2 of 7: Summer 2004 / 2000 / 1996 & Winter 1948 / 1952 / 1956
for the introduction & line-up of monthly capsules
running from August 2021 to February 2022
Mad Men - "Waterloo" (season 7, episode 7 / part 1 finale)
Story (aired on May 25, 2014/written by Carly Wray and Matthew Weiner; directed by Matthew Weiner): "Waterloo" begins with liftoff. Bert - our oldest character - is glued to his TV as the Apollo 11 rocket launches from Cape Canaveral; upon ignition he's practically purring like a cat. Everyone has the moon on their minds in this mini-finale (Mad Men would only resume again after another year, although the official numbering marks this as a continuous season). On the night of July 20 as Neil Armstrong takes his one small step, we watch not just alongside Bert - who murmurs, simply, "Bravo" - but also the Francis clan (plus Betty's old college pal and her family) in Henry's Rye estate, the Burger Chef team in their Indiana hotel, and, back in New York, Roger's mixed-up family (an ex-wife, a soon-to-be-ex-husband-in-law, and an abandoned grandson). Don, Harry, Pete, and Peggy are particular worried about the fate of the astronauts on the eve of their big pitch meeting, and not just for the sake of national/humanitarian honor; if something terrible happens in outer space, their fast food deal will be completely soured the next morning. As it turns out the Apollo 11 crew will be just fine, but plenty of more earthbound drama will unfold by episode's end.
Wray and Weiner supply several fake-outs and surprises to keep us on our toes; one of the smallest but most delightful belongs to Sally, who appears to be making eyes at the jockish Sean Glaspie (Charlie DePew) who arrives for a visit with father Richard (Barry Levy), mother Carolyn (Kellie Martin), and his nerdy, space-obsessed little brother named, naturally, Neil (Elijah Nelson). The shot/reverse shot cutting may be messing with us, however. Ultimately it's Neil who Sally kisses after gazing through his telescope. This is a cute analog to the broader reversals and left turns in play in the central story. Don is, from all appearances, on his way out of SC&P. Cutler - best to refer to Jim by his last name now given the other Jim in play - even tries to boot Don by arguing that his disruption of the Commander meeting placed him in breach of contract. However, this plot is botched when Cutler claims the other partners are behind him but only Joan is (even she smirks, "You shouldn't have done that" while he sputters). Nonetheless, Don is a marked man and something that happens the night of the moonwalk seals the deal. Bert passes away while serenely watching the lunar landing, and Cutler wastes no time in declaring that now he has the votes to cut Don loose. Only Roger has the wherewithal to play the cavalry.
Before he dies, Bert has a few things to say to Roger including the titular reference. ("Every time an old man starts talking about Napoleon," Roger remarks, "you know they're gonna die.") He also wounds Roger by telling him that he has talent and skill but is not a leader; Cutler, on the other hand, does have "vision" even if he's not on Bert's team. It's no accident then that when Roger meets with the other Jim - the devilish Hobart of McCann Erickson - he cites his own vision for the company, which involves rescuing it from Cutler. Hobart wants the whole Chevy team under the McCann umbrella in order to keep Buick from bolting, and Roger suggests that they buy a 51% share in SC&P as an independently operated subsidiary. Don, Roger, and Pete are of essence to the deal alongside, more troublingly, Ted, who has been taking clients on near-suicidal skydives and pronouncing to anyone who will listen that he wants to quit advertising. This is where Don comes in handy. With a stunned Cutler playing the devil on his other shoulder (or is it vice versa), Ted listens as Don coaxes him into acceptance by recalling the downfall of '68, and what it took Don to climb back. Dump the responsibilities of partnership, Don pleads, and return to the pleasures of pure creative work at the agency. "Does this mean I could come back to New York?" Ted brightens up. He's in and, ultimately, so is even Cutler ("It's a lot of money!"). Don's job is saved.
And Peggy is just getting started. When Don learns of Bert's passing and his own imminent departure, he decides to flip Pete's plan back again. Peggy will make the presentation to Burger Chef after all, so it will be easier to keep the client if Don goes. After a nervous night, she speaks from the heart as she only could with the new strategy she's invented, even adding a touching note (which takes Don and others who know her by surprise) about a 10-year-old who will be waiting in her apartment, watching TV, when she returns. She's not lying. Julio has visited her, weeping, before her departure to the Midwest to let her know that his mom is moving to Newark and he'll miss the landlady he bickered with for several years. She'll miss him too. Pulling at the heartstrings by evoking familial bonds for her prospective clients (while drawing upon nonconventional "familial" bonds of her own), Peggy knocks it out of the park. "Family Supper at Burger Chef" is a hit (I love the way the camera dwells on the Middle American-looking George Payton's absorbed expression as the barometer of her success). If this is her Waterloo, then she's the Duke of Wellington.
The episode ends on a bubbly note, following the thread of Don's redemption and Peggy's ascension rather than Megan's final farewell (more on that in my response below) or Bert's demise. That said, this cheerful conclusion involves Bert directly. Popping out of the ether for an apropos song-and-dance number - "The moon belongs to ev'ryone!" - a spectral Bert serenades a stunned, bemused, and ultimately queasy Don. This is a gorgeous spurt of surrealism, as much a winking tribute to the boss of all bosses over seven seasons - or at least the actor who played him (Robert Morse is a Tony-award winning musical man going back to the era that Mad Men takes place) - as it is an ambiguous if momentarily uplifting message for Don. It's certainly a marked contrast to the words Cutler spits at him early on: "You know, Ted and I, whenever we would hear that your agency was involved, we'd always be so intimidated. What was that man up to? Such a cloud of mystery. Now that I've been backstage, I am deeply unimpressed, Don. You're just a bully and a drunk. A football player in a suit. The most eloquent I've ever heard you was when you were blubbering like a little girl about your impoverished childhood." The venom's been removed, but the bite still stings.
My Response:
Mad Men - "The Strategy" (season 7, episode 6)
Story (aired on May 18, 2014/written by Semi Chellas; directed by Phil Abraham): It's to the side of the episode's central drama, but something is going on with General Motors. When McCann Erickson's Jim Hobart crowds Roger in a steamroom, needling him about Chevy and Buick, Roger makes a few homoerotic cracks - but a far more overtly gay storyline reveals what's really going on. Bill Hartley (Matthew Glave) is a GM rep who aggressively hits on Joan in the office but ends up calling Bob after getting arrested late at night for "attempting to fellate an undercover officer." Bill is certain that Bob understands his troubles and can be discreet, but he also wants him to know that GM is recruiting him to Detroit to handle their prized Buick account. Determined to cover his tracks, Bob proposes to Joan and when she turns him down ("You shouldn't be with a woman"), he drops the puppy dog facade to make a far more naked appeal to mutual self-interest. He needs a beard to fit in with the auto industry culture and she needs a way out of her sad single life with a mother and baby boy in a crowded apartment. "You're wrong," Joan corrects him. "I want love, and I'd rather die hoping that happens that settle for some arrangement. And you should too." The next day, the whole office discovers GM's next move - taking the XP inhouse and leaving SC&P with egg on its face. To compensate, Jim proposes making Harry a partner and aggressively advertising their new computer.
Meanwhile, Pete, Don, and Peggy overcome their personal frustrations over the "family table" at Burger Chef. Pete begins the episode cheerfully triumphant, flying back to New York with Bonnie and even joining the mile-high club en route. But things quickly fall apart. Showing up with a Barbie doll for his timid daughter Tammy (Arya Lyric Lebeau), who barely seems to remember him, he ends up staying at Cos Cob late into the night until Trudy returns from a date. Scolding her but also impressed that she appears to be showing off for him, he's further thrown off his game the next day when Bonnie calls out his distractibility (by the end of "The Strategy" their hot affair appears to have cooled off completely). Megan also flies to New York, visiting Don to make breakfast on their balcony, pop into the office to catch up with old friends...and pack her things away as if she made this trip mostly to tie up loose ends. She acts surprised when Don mentions flying out in her direction a few weeks later; they are on different wavelengths. Peggy, happy to stick to the Burger Chef strategy by focusing on busy moms who need a way to bring the family together, unravels when she realizes that she doesn't connect to this perspective. And she reels Don into her distress until the two of them are up late into the night brainstorming - Don mostly egging her on rather than inserting his own ideas. Finally she realizes what appeals to her: not the contrived, overly-researched concerns of the prototypical hectic mom, but the impromptu assembly of a makeshift family in a public space. This trio of the discontented - the three stars of the pilot eighty-plus episodes down the line - meet at a Burger Chef somewhere, who knows where, to manifest this very concept in the process of discussing it. Always striving for and stumbling around personal happiness, they never seem more satisfied than when they're just doing their job.
My Response:
My Response:
belated December 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE MOVIES #86 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Mysterious Skin (+ old/new Dune archive reading/capsule, Twin Peaks Reflections: Pinkle, Mayor, Lana, Big Ed's Gas Farm and house, Who's Donna's father?/Eraserhead & more) plus TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS
The last new "Twin Peaks Cinema" topic of 2021 was actually, in terms of publication, the first of 2022, since it went up on New Year's Day. I've had Mysterious Skin in mind for a long time, as it's probably one of the closest films to Fire Walk With Me both in terms of its subject matter and how it chooses to deal with the heavy theme. This makes for a wide-ranging discussion, with a long aside on Parts 17 and 18 of The Return and the question of how it relates to the seemingly unsurpassable conclusion of Fire Walk With Me (also a major topic in recent Twin Peaks Conversations, including one linked below). Other parts of this main podcast episode use the "Miss Twin Peaks" episode as a springboard for lighter aspects of Peaks - particularly a trio of goofballs from the second season - as well as thoughts on old and new Dune alike in the wake of my first trip to a movie theater in nearly two years. I wasn't able to include the various bonus sections - feedback, podcast recommendations, etc - this time, and they'll probably have to wait until my Olympics series is over (if all goes well, I'll be resuming that in a week and a half; if all doesn't go well, it will go the way of other recent abandoned projects). But I did want to make room for that one film capsule since it ties into my choice of archive reading. It's also interesting to consider that despite their many differences, both Dune and Mysterious Skin belong to the science fiction genre...after a fashion.
The Piano (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #36)
After the chaos of my previous podcast season (a month's delay, weekly podcasts, an abandonment of the biweekly approach and the new release coverage, and finally a monthy schedule), the fourth season of Lost in the Movies will be more straightforward. Running from January to June, with an episode released on the first Wednesday of each month, it will consist of six films by three directors (two each). First up is Jane Campion with The Piano, making its debut in the Criterion Collection. Set in nineteenth century New Zealand, this story of a mute Scottish woman (Holly Hunter) torn between a repressed husband (Sam Neal) and brutish recluse (Harvey Keitel) is stylistically vivid, thematically troubling, and emotionally complex. I reflect on the characters' motivations, the power dynamics in their relationships, the use of the piano as a representation of the protagonist's spirit, and the context surrounding the film (including its immediately prestigious reputation and eventually notorious distributor, as well as my own memories of parental distaste). Given Keitel's role in particular - with both parallels and dramatic contrasts to a later Campion collaboration - this will make an interesting double feature with the film I have scheduled for the following month.
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Mad Men - "The Runaways" (season 7, episode 5)
Welcome to my viewing diary for Mad Men. Every Monday I will review another episode until the series finale. I have never seen this series before so there will be NO spoilers.
Story (aired on May 11, 2014/written by David Iserson and Matthew Weiner; directed by Christopher Manley): "You know who had a ridiculous dream, and people laughed at him?" an incensed Lou Avery asks, after his employees discover his secret monkey-in-the-army comic strip Scout's Honor. "You?" Stan deadpans. I watched this scene twice, somehow forgot about his retort on re-watch, and burst out laughing both times - but as that flippant insult echoes throughout the episode, it carries quite the sting. Michael, Stephanie, Megan, and Don all strive and fail, some more spectacularly than others. Even Betty, in a far more modest (and conservative) manner, falls on her face when she opines on the Vietnam War while hosting a round-robin house tour - shocking her neighbors and enraging the more cautious Henry with her hawkish opinion. Sally, who shows up with a battered face from schoolyard shenanigans, is more defiant in her defeat; "it's a nose job, not an abortion," she spits in her scandalized mother's face. Later, her warmhearted heart-to-heart with Bobby when he sneaks into her bedroom will lend the episode its title.
Michael, of course, has the starkest downfall. We - alongside Peggy and his other colleagues - have tolerated and even chuckled at the neurotic creative's eccentricities for several seasons. So if he starts to cross the line here - insisting that the office's new computer is turning the men of SC&P gay, racing to Peggy's apartment to type up his work and then trying to seduce her - it's easy to brush it off as Michael being slightly more "Michael" than usual. (The computer's constant hum agitates him so much that he stuff his ears with tissue paper; maybe that's all that has him on edge?) Ranting his conspiracy theories as Peggy's nonchalant ten-year-old tenant Julio (Jacob Guenther) marches into the apartment to watch TV, the whole situation just looks like another lark. Eventually, back in the office the following morning, it's not so funny. Calmly informing Peggy that he loves her, and that he's removed the pressure valve that was causing him so much trouble, Michael hands her a gift box containing...his severed nipple. The next thing we know he is being carted off on a stretcher. In a sudden, alarming crash it becomes apparent that Michael is severely psychotic and maybe has been for a while. This is an unforgettable shift of perspective.
My Response:
Don's drama is less violent and shocking, but no less potentially consequential on both the personal and professional front. Stephanie, his "niece" (eager to play the benevolent uncle, he conveniently forgets how he once tried to bed her), calls from L.A. to ask him for money; she's seven months pregnant, a countercultural dropout at the end of her rope. He insists that she visit Megan and stay there until he can fly out. Initially Megan welcomes her warmly but a few missteps - most fatally Stephanie's offhand comment that she already knows all of Don's secrets - spoil the bonhomie. Megan coldly writes a $1,000 check to the guest she now regards as a rival, pretending (and maybe half - ok, a quarter) believing that she's asking her to leave for her own good. She even deflects blame onto Don for being too meddlesome, judgmental, and controlling. With her disappointed husband all to herself, Megan throws a party for her acting class in their (?) home, dancing in a manner reminiscent of the bohemian shindig Don attended in season one before breaking up with his mistress. She then entices him into a menage a trois with her flirtatious friend Amy (Jenny Wade). Whatever Megan thinks this will achieve, it doesn't - they are more estranged than ever the next morning, especially after Stephanie calls to say she promised Anna that she wouldn't disrupt Don's life.
In one rare triumph, however, Don does accomplish something in California. Running into Harry at Megan's place by surprise, they go drinking and Harry spills the beans. Lou and Jim are plotting to sign Commander, the Philip Morris cigarette brand, which will force Don out of the company given his infamous letter. Don races back to the East Coast and triumphantly swoops into the Algonquin just in time to screw up the meeting for his fuming would-be executioners. Who's laughing now?
My Response:
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