Mad Men 1x02 Reaction

Paul's such an idiot. He mentions the word "explosive" in his pitch and he acts surprised when Don jumps to bomb shelters. "Any excuse to get closer" is an underappreciated idea for a deodorant company I could see a great tag-line being born from there. Interestingly enough, you mention how advertising is centered around appealing to women but I read an article a few years about the rise of stay-at-home dads in my area of the US and how stores that carried products that were thought to traditionally appeal only to women were changing their inventory and displays to appeal more to men because on average men shopped quicker but spend considerably more money per item purchased and they were less likely to care about buying things at a discount. Love that there's no seat belt in the cars that they're driving so the kids can hop easily between front and back seat and Betty can lean on Don while he drives drunk. Also, I completely agree with Betty that having an unlisted number shouldn't carry an extra charge. So weird to think that everyone's phone number and home address was easily accessible for anyone and everyone.

Luis

God I can’t wait for them to watch Andor. Also thanks Kara, I’m really enjoying the discussion that people are having in the comments of this show

BigJo H

From what I've seen, Entourage is the exact kind of show that Mad Men is trying not to be.

TeaDrinker3000

im just gonna put it out there now... after mad men, entourage is a must. I appreciate this one though ladies.<3 will be fun for however long this takes to finish.

Robert

Great analysis. one question: what's "TW:"?

Infode

The voice memo I recorded immediately after the episode whilst skimming through each scene talking as I went is literally 25 minutes long, so I've written this to be as concise as possible and it's still huge. God I miss filming reaction videos, I can't wait till I can do them again. There will be some discussion about subject matters that might be triggering for some people, so I'll put a TW at the beginning of those points. - If the first episode had me getting a good taste of what this show was going to be, the second episode definitely has me hooked. I already know that I'm going to love this show, and I'm so glad that my first time watching this show is where I'm at both an age and a place in my life where I am mature enough to be able to appreciate it for what it is. - The first point that pretty much ran through my mind the entire way through the episode is that the story they want to tell would be very difficult for a writing room of predominantly men to be able to tell. It's very much giving me something akin to my reception to the Barbie movie in that what you're interacting with seems to be a framework, a mosaic of so many different ideas we have about gender, of masculinity, femininity and social construct as an apparatus. A societal dumping of the purse to see what's held inside and how things are linked. - I have to talk about the unbelievable amount of talent that went into the production design. Peggy and Joan in particular just look absolutely stunning, the yellow ensemble that Peggy is wearing brilliantly contrasted with Joan's striking red, you can't take your eyes off them. - With the cinematography, there's so many shots, in which the camera is pointing up at an upwards angle for both the men and the women, as if they're kind of dominating the scene. It's this little trick the camera's doing that shows the importance of these characters in a way that isn't necessarily showing them dominating over each other, but perhaps them commanding more respect than they would in comparison to other industries they work in. - The framing of Joan's actress is probably a rare example in which a production is deliberately framing her breasts into the center of the frame as often as possible, but having it legitimately be a storytelling device and something that adds to the characterization and thematic underpinning of how Joan's character is using her body as a means to an end of maintaining her place on the ladder, so to speak. - Peggy noticing her co-worker crying in the bathroom and then being brought to a similar position, albeit not quite being reduced to tears, by the episode's end was clever bookending. - As a brief comedic respite, I have to draw attention to the character who's literally the gayest man alive and whom I absolutely adore. The double entendres they're giving his characters are so funny, and my internalized head canon is that deep down all of the men in the office know what his deal is, but they completely accept him anyways. On a more serious note, when Peggy is also subjected to his male gaze, very subtly later on, is perhaps a slight little nod to the idea that unfortunately misogyny is very real amongst gay men as well, regardless of actual sexuality. - It's worth noting that in my country, divorce did not become legalised until 1995, which means that there's literally a shorter amount of time between today and divorce becoming legalised than there is between the year in which this show is actually set. It very much stuck out to me watching the divorced woman drag a box by herself in broad daylight and what the show was trying to tell us in that moment as to the status of women in this position. - As an aside, getting the brief interaction of Betty with her daughter, I can only kind of imagine what kind of ideas both her (and her younger brother of course) are internalising from watching the interactions between their parents. - Then of course we get to the beginning of the plot line where it's explicitly talked about how Betty would more than likely benefit from getting psychiatric help. Seeing the dynamic of what's going on in an American setting reminded me that less than 20 years before when this show is set, JFK's sister Rosemary was subjected to a lobotomy against her will at the age of just 23, which left her mentally incapacitated and unable to speak for the remainder of her life. It was, of course, the father's decision that he made without the consent of her mother given the fact that she was prone to "convulsions" and "outbursts of rage"... It's just so beyond awful how things are still skewed nowadays in the perception of women as 'insane'. - During an era in which psychiatry was seen as "this year's candy pink stove", it really goes to show how for both men and women to varying degrees in various different aspects, keeping a stiff upper lip and maintaining this role to the best of your ability is really the only option that one has. But of course, it goes without saying that men still in this world have considerably more options than women. - The scene where it's first pitched to advertise the Right Guard and Don brings the boys back down to earth by bringing up the fact that it's going to be women buying this for their husbands was a very twisted, sardonic way of showing that Don Draper is the only person in the room who's giving a shit about what women think. Although it goes without saying that he's not exactly doing it with male feminist intentions necessarily. - TW: The scene where Paul is showing Peggy around the place: I've unfortunately just internalised so many different scenes like this, and I'm very aware of the type of show we're watching where at any moment I'm just expecting an actual assault to happen. This was very much the case here, even with the scene between the two of them that came up later. - Although initially when I watched the first scene I was quite elated to catch on to the fact that he was making a Twilight Zone reference. I can only imagine what watching Twilight Zone back in the day when it was first airing must have been like it must have just blown people's heads off frankly. - "What do women want?" "Who cares?". I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the initial intention behind the scene was absolutely not trying to glorify a machismo mentality, because I've unfortunately seen it used out of context à la "I am the one who knocks". For psychiatry to just be seen as 'being happy' or 'getting happier' as opposed to intentionally allowing oneself to be sad was fantastic underpinning. - The scene where Betty is catastrophizing over possibly hurting their daughter to point where she has a permanent scar stood out for two reasons. The first being all she can think about is "how beautiful is my daughter going to be when she grows up" because of course that's where her daughter's power, safety, and lack of safety is going to come from: her physical beauty. - The second is my personal favourite from the episode alongside the ending. Don, with tears in his eyes, saying "I'll do anything for you, if a psychiatrist is the right thing you need". At this point I really didn't see the ending of the episode coming, so it was a great bait and switch when it happened. Nonetheless when this particular scene ended all I could think to myself is again "I'm so glad that we have this show that's either written by women or at the very least written by people who give a shit about women". We're given this guy who clearly loves his wife and wants to do the best for her, and both of them are very aware of the limitations to not only his ability for emotional labor but emotional availability generally. For him to basically in as many words say "I don't give a shit about what society thinks, the only thing that matters to me is that you're going to be happy" indicates that there's legitimately two sides to him. I'm so glad that the show isn't treating him as someone we're supposed to admire. - When we see Don messing around with the other woman he's sleeping with, it's analogous to where being with his wife is like being in school, then being with his mistress is like being on the playground. Her saying to him "please don't talk about your wife, don't make me feel cruel", the awareness they both have of her own complicity in what's going on I wanted to highlight. It was a great sprinkling of complexity for her character, but also underlines her function of giving Don break from being a man to just be a teenage boy again. - The montage sequence of getting all the men walking in and out and leering at Peggy feels a bit over emphasised, but I attribute this to 'Season 1 Dumbing Down' woes. I've a funny feeling that later seasons will be a little bit more restrained with something like this, so I'm not criticising this in any kind of serious way, it's still a well executed and necessary scene. - Our final sequence in which Betty goes to the psychiatrist alongside the reveal that Don is essentially listening in on the one true moment of relief that Betty has is truly the episode's focal point. Even if what he's done was with the absolute best of intentions highlights insidious lurking that patriarchy has for women. Just constantly being watched and looked at and judged and evaluated and deemed worthy by men that's just absolutely unrelenting, it's just living in a glass box the entire time. Whether or not people will look past you or not is secondary to the fact that you are just always going to be viewed. A great reinforcement of Betty's montage moments prior. - TW: There was a very recent case in this country of a woman who was sexually assaulted five years ago. The circumstances were awful, and as such she had to go see a psychiatrist about it on a weekly basis, and afterwards was told that her legal counsel would have access to all the psychiatrist notes. Were she to refuse to grant them that access, it would delay her case by an entire year. There's now action to be taken for the courts to not have that be the case for future survivors, but ultimately her notes did have to be taken, otherwise her case could have fallen apart had she not allowed strangers to look at these notes in full. I don't have to explain how for a person who's been the victim of this kind of crime how something like this happening is just being re-victimized all over again. As such, the psychiatrist's flippant discussion with Betty's husband about her most private affairs was particularly draining. P.S. As an ex-smoker, jesus fucking christ this will be a tough series to get through.

TeaDrinker3000

In addition to being Sabrina, Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper) also voiced Jinora in "Avatar: The Legend of Korra". That is still her main association for me. Regarding the smoking in the series, the producers had a rule to decide which regular characters smoke and which don't. If the actor smokes in real life (Or used to smoke and has since quit), then the character smokes. If the actor never smoked, then the character doesn't smoke. Shaving razors are sold under the "Razor and blades model", and is where the model got its name from: You sell one part for cheap (or even free) and then sell the other part for an inflated price since the first part is useless on its own. Companies sell the "razor" (The handle and base) for cheap, but the "blades" (the actual sharp metal piece) are pricey. Since the blades get worn out and need to be replaced, it's an ongoing revenue stream. Other examples are printers and ink (Printers are cheap, ink costs a fortune), electric toothbrushes (The handle is cheap, the replacement brushes are expensive), etc. Legend says that the Gillette company invented this policy, but that's not true (Gillette did invent the safety razor, but didn't use this model until OTHER shaving companies started using it and then followed suit). I'll say this a lot throughout the series (I said it last episode as well), but in the vein of "the bar may be on the floor, but at least he didn't trip over it", Don at least RECOGNIZED that his wife was unhappy. Unlike Tony Soprano, he didn't get angry at her or resentful of the situation, he saw that it was a Real Problem. Did he handle it well? No. Is he trying to help her merely as an extension of making his own life easier? Yes. But at least he stepped over the first obstacle and saw that it was a problem. It's the difference between being a general scumbag, and being a murderous criminal.

JBK405

The lettering of 'Mad Men' on this thumbnail is better than the first episodes'

Infode

Another interesting point/quote from this episode was when Betty and one of Dr. House's interns called their children over with Sabrina (Sally) having the plastic sheet over her, but Betty was more concerned over the clothes being on the floor (messy, crumpled) but not concerned about her daughter possibly suffocating reinforcing the quote, Betty echoes to Don later on with having a scar is worse than Sally dying. This cements the idea (unfortunately) of presentability particularly for women overrides being comfortable even at the cost of physical pain or to drive home the point harder, death.

Infode

2 episodes and the girls are locked in and calling shots and the discussions are fire 🥰 It's gonna be a good year! I posted below but while women did remove facial (and arm) hair, the standard of western women shaving armpits and legs was wholesale invented in the 1920s thru 1940s due to changing fashions. It's not possible to say whether media "caused" it but they definitely jumped on a growing trend and turned it into a beauty standard so strong you'd think women shaving legs was default human nature, not learned behavior. Joan in this episode absolutely reinforces patriarchy. Like many women she's both a victim and a beneficiary/supporter. We don't know how old she is, but if Joan is say 20-something she would be 80-something now, that's the sort of generation we're dealing with. I love how much you're into Betty already, it's giving Carmela, it's giving Skyler. I think when Peggy looks in the bathroom mirror, that's her deciding she doesn't want to be "one of the girls crying" which is really harsh but she's a young girl hustling and I'll never fault that. You said it in the review re: Don but every look/expression in the show has so much baked in, you could talk for 20 mins about what 1 glance in 1 shot meant. Good time to remember that most of the writers of Mad Men are women. "I don't like science fiction" "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that..." me when we get the Andor reactions

Kara

Doing advertising for Nixon in 1960 doesn’t necessarily have the negative implications you would think. He didn’t win the White House until 1968 and a lot happened in those 8 years… and while he certainly wasn’t a saint and was the one who coined the term “war on drugs”, the blame for the ramifications of the war on drugs has historically been laid at the feet of Reagan, not Nixon. Reagan is the one who escalated it into what we think of it today and is seemingly the one you were thinking about in the context of what you said. Nixon was infamous for different reasons.

JJ

'strong silent types' have always been vocal when angry. to steal someone else's post: "honestly the best marketing scheme in history is men successfully getting away with calling women the 'more emotional' gender because they've successfully rebranded anger as Not An Emotion"

Kara

love when men look 50+ at 28 and then enjoy 30 years of people saying "wow they haven't aged at all"

Kara

I looked it up last episode and Tony Soprano was born in 1959. could literally be the child of one of the characters here (like Don's kid if his son was a little younger)

Kara

its 2 eps and they're already locked in lmaooo its gonna be good

Kara

"Is Don self-aware?" Well, that's an interesting question. This is the first episode where we see him really trying to convert what is happening in his personal life into something he can use in an advertising campaign, and I don't think he could do that so effectively if he weren't (mostly) aware of himself and the people around him. Of course it makes sense dramatically that the show would use Don's work storylines to reflect and contrast his personal storylines -- every show does this with their protagonist's job -- but Don is an active participant in designing those advertising campaigns, which means that he has to be an active participant in sorting out what is going subtextually in his personal life. It's a pretty fascinating tension to watch the main character deliberately work on unpacking the theme of the episode... just so he can use it in a deodorant commercial.

Mike

+1. Women have been thriving under various patriarchies for millennia. For as long as there's been society there have been strong women (and minorities / people from underrepresented groups) finding ways to thrive even in the most dire of circumstances. The big Suffragette march in UK was 1908, only 50 years before the show - that would be like something in 1975 to us. Patriarchy also makes conforming men worse, and non-conforming men forced to conform or be ostracized from society. The 'lean in' girlboss feminism kick of women character writing thru the 2010s was really demoralizing and I'm glad we're mostly through it, at least in the more serious shows.

Kara

I like to imagine that Tony envisions himself like Don Draper as a “strong silent type,” because there’s the irony of Don not being the strong silent type and going so far as to lose his cool and professionalism because a woman had an opinion

My Toasty Toast

Sure, but it was asked in the context of advertising. Only the audience knows the Betty undertones.

JJ

She's right that he started the war on drugs and it was explicitly about subverting the black and anti-war vote.

Eric Viola

JJ

i knew shes gonna quote the sopranos with the strong silent type lmao

Josip

I don't agree with Don on this one. People revere astronauts and probably did even more in the 1960's. When they look at an astronaut, the first thing they think isn't that he pees and poops his pants, unless they're five years old maybe lol.

Taya

An interesting fact: John Slattery, the actor who portrays Roger Sterling, was only around 44 years old when the show started. The actor now, almost 20 years later, is only 62, which is about the age I thought his character was when I first started watching lol. He still looks basically the same, btw.

Gaboxxy

I tend to think that Mad Men is our insight into what Tony Soprano's parents went through in their youth and what shaped their actions. Obviously, this is a very broad statement because for one they belong to different social classes but I mean it more as what society expected from men and women at this time. Don Draper does seem to be the strong silent Cary Grant type that Tony idolises (I mean Jon Hamm literally looks like he walked out of an Old Hollywood film), but the question is if Don even is all that. It is very telling that in the very second episode of this show we focus on the women and their experience be it at home or in the corporate world. It is fascinating the ways in which these women have learned to adapt and survive. Like you mentioned it's crazy how there is absolutely 0% privacy in regards to Betty's psychiatrist visits. Don owns her in all aspects. I mean did you know that a woman in the US couldn't open a bank account without a male co-signer as late as 1974? Yeah. That is why I always roll my eyes when people deflect criticism of weak female characters in certain films, shows, books set in the past because "that's how it was back in the day". Absolutely not. The expectations and realities of society in the past represents an even more of a ripe environment for complex and interesting female characters to take shape. Mad Men is prime example or how to do great female characters without shoehorning a "girl boss" angle into them. Here you can also see how the patriarchy also pressures and disadvantages men because the office guys appear in this episode as shallow cardboard cutouts in comparison to the ladies. They all seem to put on a front, not letting their true selves slip out, trying to imitate what they think appears as competent and successful, maybe even emulating Don. They act as if they're still in a frat like Don mentioned last episode. Maybe some of them don't even want to approach women like that and are actual dorks (or gay like Sal) but in order to present as successful they need to play into the role. Everyone loses.

bondbond53

I don't know, I wasn't alive during the Reagan administration but my dad was and he loves Reagan. He said Reagan was able to fix everything that Carter fucked up and he ended the Cold War.

BND

I've always hated the question "what do women want?" because it makes us sound like we're an alien species that follow a single hivemind. "Maybe it's some mysterious wish that we're ignoring." Uh no Don, it's just that your wife is as fully human as you are, with all of the complexities and contradictions that come along with that. It's interesting that he came up with "any excuse to get closer" because he must sense that Betty wishes he would open up and form a deeper emotional bond with her. But instead of doing anything about that (which would likely help alleviate some of her anxiety/depression), he just uses it as a tagline.

Taya

And men as well, it should also be said. For example male plain Indians in what is now Western/South-Western U.S would usually pluck out as much body hair as they could, including their beards.

Gaboxxy

Women have been removing their body hair since ancient times. I remember reading that in Ancient Greece women would pluck or singe off all their body hair. Even back in ancient Egypt women would use beeswax to remove body hair. I believe Gillette introduced the "safety razor" sometime in the early 20th century and that's when women started shaving, but they've been removing body hair well before that.

BND

Such a good episode. Love Betty!

Priscilla

Lola I think most of them time when I see people online talk about where everything went wrong with the US people tend to point to Raegan. Don't get me wrong Nixon also seems to get a lot of people's wrath because of the Watergate scandal and his actions during the Vietnam war, but a lot of what has accelerated the awful aspects of capitalism seems to stem from the Raegan administration (obviously there's so many more factors and this is a simplification).

bondbond53

🖕🏽

BND

"Who is this moron flying around in space, he pees in his pants" is such a funny comment. Very Don Draper way of thinking about an astronaut.

Mark M

chill we just want to know 😪

thenamelessgirl

OMG STFU about Monster. They'll post it whenever they want. This is Mad Men.

BND

why do people keep asking about monster? They post it when they post it.

BND

my laptop died and now I'm already behind with the new shows 💀 fate doesn't want me to be up to date with any of the reactions 😪

sand_fl

So no Monster today? :(

Jack SV

You two are going to love this show.

BobJ

I love Betty so much. This episode is so good.

Cole

Literally why I thought this show would be perfect for them and why it is my nr. 1 TV show of all time

bondbond53

You two reacting to this is gonna be a trip lol, the way I see it, you’ll be able to lean in to the elements of the sopranos and breaking bad that you perhaps cared about the most, and kind of forget about the other stuff

Wayne

Damn, was expecting for episode 4 of Monster (T_T)

Floweyyyy

monster tomorrow?

Krystian Krawacki

we're also getting Monster today or until tomorrow? 👉👈

thenamelessgirl