Mad Men – Season 7, Episode 12 – Skating ← FREE KRAUT!

Mad Men – Season 7, Episode 12 – Skating 4

The show took off for parts unknown, which made it a thoroughly refreshing, upsetting and unsettling episode.

Everyone was out of their comfort zone. And while a few characters were happy in the embraces of McCann Erickson, the featured ones were most decidedly not. Don was Jim Hobart’s prize, and it was clear from the outset that he wasn’t interested in being anyone’s white whale. Shoot, he wasn’t even really all that special, as Hobart’s flattery had been used on Ted as well. So he walked out of a meeting for diet beer, the beverage that would become Miller Lite. He stopped by to see his daughter, but she had left already, and the boys were busy. So he and Betty chat, he wishes her well on her psychology studies, and off he goes, headed west, debating his future with the ghost of Bert. It turns out he is trying to find the missing Diana, my least favorite character, but who is put to better use when we don’t have to see her.

Meanwhile, things aren’t going well for anyone else. The saddest tale is Joan’s, who run up against a brick wall of obnoxious and stupid male chauvinism so daunting that she’s threatening Hobart with the ACLU and the EEOC by episode’s end. The bad guys are so blockheadedly, fiendishly bad that it’s all a bit much. But somehow, the episode works anyway. Joan used old-fashioned feminine wiles for a long time on the show, and it usually worked for her, because her ambitions were limited and her use of those wiles was usuallly shrewd. But Joan was a partner at the old firm, and she had grown to like her job. Now, everything she had constructed – her status, her role with clients, her dignity – was being rapidly stripped from her. It was painful to watch, and didn’t stretch credulity too much. It was left to Roger to persuade her to take Hobart’s 50 cents on the dollar deal to buy her out. Joan had certainly been humiliated before, and worse, but this all somehow felt more awful in large part because it felt like all her efforts had been swept away in a few minutes.

Roger, meanwhile, really has nothing to do at McCann Erickson. So he looks for excuses to hang around the old place. He found an organ (who knows where Matthew Weiner came up with that one?) and played it, spooking Peggy – who was hanging around herself because her office wasn’t ready yet. (McCann thought she was a secretary.) In an episode that included several visually striking sequences, there was nothing quite like Peggy roller skating through the old hallways while Roger played the organ.

In Wisconsin, Don finds Diana’s old home, and her daughter, who looks as dreary as her mother. He also finds her ex-husband, who is not falling for Don’s ruse about free beer or even his backup lie about being a bill collector. Diana’s ex shoos him away. He is driving back when he picks up a hitchhiker who is headed west, to Minnesota. It’s not clear if Don ever plans to return to New York again. He doesn’t have much it seems he would miss all that much. The job is unappealing. He’s got money. He can’t even spin a persuasive yarn anymore. Part of me would be just as happy if Don just left for good. That wouldn’t be satisfying, but he seems to be doing a more rational version of what Jack Nicholson’s character, Bobby Dupea, did at the end of Five Easy Pieces – head west, and north, but with a lot more money. (That film, coincidentally, was released in 1970, the same year as Mad Men is set.) I remain unpersuaded about Diana as a pivotal player at the end, but we’ll see what happens.

But the character who concludes the episode is Peggy, walking in with Bert’s artwork, wearing sunglasses, and with a cigarette dangling from her lips. Given what we’ve seen of McCann Erickson’s treatment of Joan, and for that matter its treatment of Peggy, there is little reason for optimism. But in an episode that emphasized imagery, Peggy’s entrance suggested that her professional fate might turn out differently. She also seems like the future, in a way that Don, Roger and Joan do not.

 

 

 

4 thoughts on “Mad Men – Season 7, Episode 12 – Skating

  1. FreeSeatUpgrade May 5,2015 10:44 am

    Loved this ep. Two good ones in a row after a slow start to “the final episodes.” That Don would simply wander off feels exactly right; he’s been going through the motions of a job which brings him no joy any more. The clincher, though, is that he won’t find any joy to be had elsewhere either.

    Peggy will be the only one with a happy ending. I loved her swagger into McCann, just perfect.

    "Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
    • nevermoor May 5,2015 11:48 am || Up

      I hope you’re right about Peggy, but it seems pretty long odds.

      "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
      • FreeSeatUpgrade May 5,2015 1:19 pm || Up

        I guess it would be more accurate to say that I expect Peggy to acquit herself well in the choices with which she will be faced. That last scene projected self determination. Everyone else is either at the mercy of the forces around them, or unhappy with every possible outcome.

        "Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."
  2. nevermoor May 5,2015 11:48 am

    Loved Don checking the window in his office and being disappointed it didn’t open. Fan service of the highest order.

    "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"

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