Mad Men
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
A man is whatever room hes in, Bert Cooper tells Don and Pete in Nixon vs. Kennedy.
Who knows why people do what they do?
Don asks Betty in its follow-up, the season one finale, The Wheel.
Those statements are different ways of asking the same questions.
But the illusion of division, of opposition, is exactly that.
They are fully loaded, very different and yet complementary picture wheels.
And they would still be part of a whole: all of a piece.
And it is that, to an extent.
Don Draper vs. Dick Whitman.
The struggle between Nixon and Kennedy, men and symbols, is not a struggle.
Its the illusion of a struggle, shock waves from an overpopulated unconscious.
The carriage holds eighty to a hundred and forty 35mm slides.
you could view each one individually for as little or as long as you wish.
Shuttle through them quickly and the flicker might suggest a movie of your life.
When it arrives at Sterling Cooper, its known as the Wheel.
Don renames it the Carousel, but its still the Wheel.
These are different names for the same equipment.
Its not a spaceship, its a time machine, Don tells Kodaks reps.
But its both: It takes you back, but it also takes you away.
Dick Whitman took himself away from Dick Whitmans miserable life.
He renamed himself Don Draper.
He stole a dead mans name and remade himself as a slab of brainy beef.
He looks like a guy who has the world by the tail and always did.
Don handpicked Duck over Pete.
Don introduces Duck to Bert, whos watching election returns in his sock feet.
But he is still himself, always.
You look so different when youre drunk, Hildy says.
Hes Kennedy, hes Nixon, hes a good husband, hes a terrible husband, hes still Harry.
You dont wanna be Galt.
Joan calls it right when she tells Paul his play is no good.
She doesnt pretend to be a drama critic, but something about it feels false to her.
We are all Tollefson and Galt.
We are all Don and Dick and Joan and Peggy and Pete and Nixon and Kennedy.
One aspect emerges, another recedes, depending on the room.
Nobody knows why we enter one room and not another.
A cheer goes up from the assembled throng: Theyre all Nixon people because their bosses are Nixon people.
If Nixon wins, they might win Nixonmaybe right away, maybe in 1964.
The night is young and already theyre low on booze.
Forward, forward, forward: click, click, click.
Its late at night.
Sterling Cooper is dark.
Don stands in his office doorway and is surprised to see Harry there, too.
And we shuttle back again, to the party:
Same floor.
More darkness, near silence.
The partys at low ebb.
At some point, the dancing stopped.
The few remaining revelers snore on the rug.
Joan slips off her heels and says yes to two of Pauls requests:Sit with me.
Dance with me.Even though he has a big mouth.
Which characters stayed home?
Lets look:
Theres Don.
Hes at home with Betty and Bobby and Sally, watching the coverage.
Sally asks Don to explain the electoral college.
Some things, kids shouldnt know.
The sun rises on Sterling Cooper.
Nobody knows, still.
Coaches revert to pumpkins.
Harry wakes up with Hildy and remembers hes a married man who never went home to his wife.
His glasses are broken.
Did Hildy do it?
We cant be sure, but she apologizes anyway, and then tells him this didnt mean anything.
Hungover partiers loiter in the kitchen: hair of the dog.
I stole your blouse, Sal confesses.
Peggy calls them animals and reports the sack of Rome to building security.
Flash forward a few hours:
Its the morning after election night.
Two contests are undecided: Nixon vs. Kennedy for the White House, Pete vs.
Duck for Executive in Charge of Accounts.
Peggys at her desk outside Dons office.
Pete marches past her.
Theres fury in his eyes.
Hes gone Full Tricky Dick, and the trick is under his arm: Dons box.
From now on, he tells Peggy, I would be very careful the way you speak to me.
He figures the election is over and Don just doesnt know it.
Hes already measuring Oval Office curtains and writing the first draft of his enemies list.
This is the moment when the Nixon-Kennedy wheel starts to spin for Don and Pete alike.
Pete opens Dons door and steps through.
Interior, Donald Drapers office, seconds later.
Pete shuts Dons door and locks it.
He tells Don the job is his because he wants it, end of discussion.
Don is rattled but unbowed.
He leaves the box with Don.
Don lifts the lid.
Were shuttling back and forth between different slides now:1950.
Korea.Dick is in his twenties.
He seems thinner, more hesitant, less worldly.
His voice is higher: almost reedy.
What made him enlist?
Does he know what hes gotten himself into?
Hes assigned to dig fighting positions in advance of an engineering unit thats scheduled to build a field hospital.
He meets Donald Draper.
Artillery is screaming in.
Dick lights a cigarette.
He wakes up in the hospital.
His parents and Adam on the platform.
Adam sees him, waves, points.
But this train only moves in one direction: forward.
Don goes over to Rachels.
Weve never seen him so distraught.
His voice sounds different: higher.
More like a boys.
He says theyll go somewhere else, Los Angeles, and start over, like Adam and Eve.
What are you, 15 years old?
What about your children?
Ill provide for them.
And live in Los Angeles?
You havent thought this through.
No, she says, Im watching you because I feel I dont know you.
A man is whatever room hes in.
You know more about me than anyone, Don says.
Who knows why people do what they do?
What kind of man are you?
Drop everything, go away, leave your life?People do it every day, Don says.
You dont want to run away with me, she says, you just want to run away.
A suicidal imagemaybe a fantasy, maybe a figurative visualization of the mans state of mind.
He puts down his suitcase and jumps.
Falling, falling, falling, verticallythen suddenly as seen from below.
He flies toward the camera: Blackness swallows the frame.
Screen direction is reversed.
He almost destroyed himself, until he didnt.
Its all still there.
Three times this season, at least, Don throws everything away, then doesnt.
Everything falls apart, but its all still there.
Go back and look at two slides from earlier in season one, and youll see what I mean.
Instead, he goes home and gives his daughter a dog.
He stopped the fall.
Slide #2:
Don at Midges apartment inThe Hobo Code,flashing Bert Coopers $2,500 bonus check.
He wants to blow it on a trip to Paris.
He asks Midge to come along.
She tells him she cant.
Don knows why: her boyfriend, Roy.
But what if shed said yes?
Going to Paris would have meant going AWOL from the life hed made.
That statement was itself a lie.
But in Dons heart, he was being honest.
For the second time, he stopped the fall.
Click, click, click, click: There it is.
Don tells Pete that hes calling his bluff, that hes named Duck Phillips head of accounts.
Pete wont accept this.
Nixon wont accept this.
Nixon wants to prove that Kennedy is another Nixon.
Don calls Petes bluff.
Its reductive, useless, false.
Don is Nixon and Kennedy, or Nixon, or Kennedy.
Depending on what room theyre in.
When Pete says he deserves Ducks job, Don jumps down his throat.
Why, because your parents are rich?
Because you went to prep school and have a five-dollar haircut?
Youve been given everything.
Youve never worked for anything in your life.
Or Don inLong Weekend,admitting he identifies with Nixon because Kennedy grew up privileged.
Why does Don seem so sure of himself?
There are rules, Roger tells Bert.
There are other rules, Bert replies.
And then the episode cuts to Don and Roger visiting Pete and telling him he can stay.
Pete cant believe his good fortune.
Hed already packed up his stuff.
Its in a box.
Now heres Pete and Don in Berts office in Nixon vs. Kennedy.
Pete tells Bert that Don Draper is really Dick Whitman, that hes probably a deserter, maybe worse.
Bert sits a bit, thinking.
Id put your energy into bringing in accounts.
Were at Pete and Trudys apartment in the opening scene of The Wheel.
Trudys dad tells Pete that hed very much like a grandchild.
Did you know theres a surge in adolescence right now?
If he doesnt, he should.
He works at Sterling Cooper, where emotionally almost everyones a teenager.
But the scene doesnt start with this conversation.
It begins with Trudy and her mom contemplating wallpaper for Trudy and Petes new apartment.
The camera pulls back to reveal Trudys dad in the living room.
And now we go back to Nixon vs. Kennedy.
Bert is getting a massage in his office.
Bert says that barring widespread voter fraud, Nixon will win.
Like Roger, Bert identifies as a Republican.
Not a Republican as Americans today know Republicans.
(Lindsay even became a Democrat in 1971.)
But in his heart, Bert belongs to the Green Party: green as in money.
Don is in many ways an awful person.
Pete is in many ways an awful person.
Now we shuttle forward, to a scene from The Wheel.
Pete says Bert already paid him and gave him some book by Ayn Rand.
He says he needs to hear Don say hes impressed.
Don says hes impressed, but he doesnt say why, and thats probably for the best.
The Carousel pitch is coming.
To get there, we need to look at a few more slides.
Were somewhere in the first quarter of The Wheel.
Its the cusp of a long Thanksgiving weekend.
Betty and the kids are going to visit her widowed father and his new girlfriend.
Or is that working?
phone bill: call after call to MH, Manhattan.
She waits, thinks.
Then she slowly walks toward us and then pivots screen right, and disappears into Dons office.
Shes in there for what seems like forever, and when she emerges, shes holding a phone bill.
She hasnt opened it yet.
Shes holding on to it, because she thinks it might answer questions shes dreaded asking.
Who knows why we do the things we do?
Now we jump forward, shuttling through the Carousel carriage, settling on .
Don with Harry Crane, the nearly naked refugee from a home that his infidelity nearly destroyed.
Harry tells him about the arty black-and-white photos he took in college.
I did a whole series that was just handprints on glass, he says.
They were modeled on the seventeen-thousand-year-old cave paintings at Lascaux, specifically the handprints.
Signature of the artist, Don says.
Glen tells Betty that his parents have forbidden him to speak to her again.
Glen, I cant talk to anyone, she says, breaking down.
She hasnt opened Dons phone bill yet.
Betty returns the gesture.
Bettys in a session with Dr. Arnold Wayne.
She gave Don a chance to fess up to his affairs.
Then she opened the phone bill and saw many phone calls to an unfamiliar number.
It was Dr. Wayne.
She is experiencing fleeting impressions of Dons prismatic, fragmented personality.
Her man is whatever bed hes in.
Its a one-sided conversation.
Dr. Wayne is listening.
Betty says that talking to him has helped her.
But shes still alone in this.
Don is standing in a conference room, selling his campaign for Kodaks Wheel.
a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.
This machine isnt a spaceship.
Its a time machine.
It goes backwards and forwards.
It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.
On-screen are photos of Don with the family he told Betty he couldnt join over Thanksgiving weekend.
Theres Don doting on Sally.
Theres Betty and Don on their wedding day.
Smiles and more smiles.
Don smiles at the images.
He loves the images.
Of course he does.
Hes in control of the presentation.
He controls how everyone in the room perceives them.
And hes using them to sell a product.
Whats on-screen is not the reality of Dons life, but an ideal.
Harry cant take it.
There are tears in his eyes.
He knows what he lost, or nearly lost, by cheating on his wife.
He just wants to go home.
The presentation is done.
The projector has been packed away.
The Wheel is almost over.
All thats left is reckoning.
Don names Peggy a copywriter.
How dare Don give his father-in-laws account to an ex-lover who doesnt even like talking to him anymore?
But theres nothing he can do.
Its Dons decision, and everyone else in the room thinks its a great idea.
This alternating Pete/Peggy structure is poetically right.
And then we cut to Don riding home on the train.
He opens his front door and calls out Bettys name.
Betty is surprised to hear his voice, but grateful.
Don says hes changed his mind, that hes coming to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving.
Daddys coming with you!
Betty tells Sally, who peals her delight.
This is what you might call the Kennedy ending.
Or the Hollywood ending.
The reality is an empty house.
He sits on the steps and contemplates his barren kingdom.
This should have been the good place.
Instead, its the place that cannot be.
When Don looked at those images during the Kodak meeting, he saw what he could be.
Sitting on the stairs now, he sees what he is.
Nixon, Kennedy, Kennedy, Nixon, Don Draper, Dick Whitman.
There is no struggle.
There is no election.
A man is whatever room hes in.
But it is, Bert says.
The contest will never be decided.
There was never a contest.
Excerpted with permission fromMad Men Carouselby Matt Zoller Seitz.
