What I Saw: Mad Men Season 5, Episode 10
What is it with Roger and Lucky Strike? When Roger has his consciousness raised, he imagines the 1919 World Series with its lucky strikes and home runs and game throwing. And Roger remembers Pearl Harbor and the Japanese's Lucky Strike when all the US battleships were at harbor and all sitting pretty in a row.
Roger had to get up really early to start Drinking before 7:30 am on Pearl Harbor Day.
Joan is also throwing air strikes at the SCDP receptionist. Joan attacks with her airplane model.
I think that the Devil made Joan do that. Look at that "666" in the window. And then Mohawk Airlines goes on strike, did the Devil make them do that too? But before she can go in with the kill, Don/Dick takes her out.
Good Catch there, Don/Dick.
Or should I say "Old Blue Eyes"? That man looks so fine in a fedora hat.
Don/Dick and Joan have a lot in common. Don/Dick was formerly the Best Ad Man going (or one of them). Now he just wants to rest on his butt and his laurels. Joan was once a very attractive and desirable woman, but like all attractive and desirable women, the looks fade and the figure waxes. Don/Dick and Joan have to figure out what to do with themselves when their old selves are no longer relevant to the tasks at hand. How do they keep going? Can they get better at being something else?
Don has been sleeping his way through the season so far.
But Jaguar or JAG-Ú-AR as Lane calls them, has come calling again. Or rather Pete has gone calling JagUar and gotten in on the next Ad Campaign Pitch for SCDP. An Ad Agency makes it reputation and is considered successful when it gets its first Car Ad Campaign.
Don/Dick takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeves and gives the Patton and Shoveling Chicken Shit in North Carolina Speech to the Troops.
Don is in the Driver's Seat.
And shifting Gears.
It is time to hit the highway, and go from 0 to 60 in 4.5 seconds, as long as the electrical systems don't dampen it out.
And Lane might just be the Dampened Electrical System of SCDP.
Lane is torn between two countries, the US and Great Britain.
We've been seeing hints of Lane's money problems all season, but now we learn why. Lane owes back taxes in Great Britain (and finds money in TAXis in the US that he has to give back to the owner) that he doesn't have the money to pay. Lane arranges for a $50,000 loan from Chemical Bank.
Harry Crane tells an anxious Lane who wants to know that SCDP can repay that loan early in the New Year with projections from Harry's TV Ad accounts that he doesn't know if his projections are correct. "Who knows what the Russians will do in the next couple of months?" says Harry.
Who knows what the Russians Lane in his Russian fur hat will do?
Lane has to embezzle the funds to pay the tax from SCDP's Loan by using a blank SCDP check, the anticipated Christmas Bonus, and Don/Dick's forged signature.
That is rather amusing when we consider that Don/Dick has been forging Donald Draper's signature for over half of his life. Now Lane is in on the creative act of Dick/Don's fake signature.
When is the SCDP embezzled funds payment going to come due? All the partners and junior partners gave up their Christmas bonuses so that the Staff could have theirs. If Joan is so good at her job as assistant CFO of SCDP, then when will she notice? Lane is getting rather damp with stress sweat from the fear of discovery. Will the lights go OUT on SCDP?
And if SCDP does find out about the forged signatures, what are they going to do about it? As I said, Don/Dick has been forging that signature for a long time. What are the legal ramifications of that?
Lane can jolly his old lady along. She'll believe anything that he tells her. Look at the Lady on the Flying Horse on the right of the bedroom wall. Look at Lane's wife's outfit. They do match, don't they? That might be a Big Crash, if Lane can't continue his accounts juggling act at SCDP.
And this is just my observation, but that loan officer or senior vice president's office at Chemical Bank is very oddly decorated.
It looks like a Graduate Student's office at a University. Odd pictures on the wall and files and files of documents. Maybe the loan will just get lost.
Season Greetings
The Christmas holidays are a religious observance that has become commercial and secular through business and advertising agencies. Christmas spending and money are what business look forward to to square their yearly accounts, just like Lane's hope for square SCDP accounts.
Hare Krishna (get the pun, Harry Crane/Hare Krishna?) is another religion that is run like a business.
Paul McKinsey has become a Hare Krishna with a new name like Paramount and a new girl friend named LikesMe.
Paul gets Harry to come and visit with him and the Krishnas, because Paul has found his religion sadly lacking. Harry on the other hand, finds Hare Krishna soulfully elevating but Jennifer would never let him join. Look at the picture, Harry and the guy in the middle in front of him are both spiritually charged with the chanting. Paul and LikesMe are like the guys in front of them, indifferent to the spiritual effect. They are there for other reasons. Paul wants the secular life back with all its consumerism and commercialism. Paul has written a teleplay for Star Trek and he wants Harry's TV world connections to get a job in the industry.
Don/Dick and Megan go to a play where commercialism and consumerism is portrayed as spiritually stultifying and debilitating.
All of these actor friends of Megan's have fainted dead away by the meaningless of their characters' lives.
Some writer wrote this script.
But the Hare Krishna religion business and LikesMe don't want Paul to leave, he is the best darn closer and recruiter that they have. So LikesMe attempts to come to some sort of business agreement with Harry Crane. Leave Paul alone and don't help him leave their business.
But Harry offers Paul a gateway back to the Material World. A plane ticket to California and $500 to start a new life in another business.
Paul takes it. Or not, I'm not sure if he leaves LikesMe or if she lets him. LifesMe has got her own business quotas to fulfill.
Has anyone stopped to think that consumerism is what drives a healthy economy? All this renunciation just makes people poor. And bored, witness Don/Dick in the office before JagUar came along and Megan went away.
Megan Ain't Betty
Don/Dick pulls his "disappear from the office and communication with the wife and go out drinking and investigating" act.
But Megan is not Betty or Anna. Megan is an actress.
Megan gives Don/Dick Hell.
And a plate full of cold spaghetti.
The more I like Megan, the more that Don/Dick thinks that maybe he should have picked a wife with his interests. He wants not just a home wife but a work wife. This might not work.
This episode was filled with puns and ironies, very well done.
Screencaps by Me