"You're as handsome as Cary Grant!" "And you're as beautiful as my hugely pregnant wife!"
So first of all, hi folks! Welcome to the third season of Mad Men, and the first season of me trying to write about Mad Men for tvgasm. I'm coming from Prison Break, a show I genuinely enjoyed but pretty much made its own jokes for me, so this will be an adjustment. Bear with me while I find my footing, won't you? (Please note that I am at a Starbucks on vacation at the moment so you can expect these a day or two sooner when I'm not traveling and/or foiled by faulty beach condo wifi.)It's still 1963, which means we'll all spend the entire season waiting for a great big book-depository-shaped shoe to drop. Last season's British Invasion has affected the structure of Sterling-Cooper, but the players are all pretty much how we left them: Roger is still the very definition of a cad, Pete is alternately jubilant and petulant, Ken is Kool as a Kucumber, Joan is still a smoking hot firecracker, and Don is still, you know. Don. So what's the back half of 1963 got in store for these folks? Let's find out!
3.01 Out Of Town. Don's half-asleep, warming milk in the kitchen in an actual pot on an honest to goodness stove. A little scene plays out in front of him, a woman giving birth to a stillborn baby. Don makes a little face like, "huh, weird that I never noticed that community theater troupe in our dining room." This isn't a flashback, they aren't memories - I assume we're seeing what Don has pieced together over the years about his birth. Poor Mrs. Whitman keeps losing babies, and her jerk husband keeps hiring inexpensive adorable little prostitutes and impregnating them. And then they die in childbirth, because that was really trendy back then. So in a sad, depression-era version of surrogacy, The midwife's all "so hey Mrs. Whitman, you can't have your asshole husband's babies, but this adorable little dead whore totally could, so here you go!" and hands over baby Dick, who is allegedly named for "a wish his mother should have lived to see," i.e. that if Mr. Whitman knocked her up she'd cut his dick off and boil it in hog fat. Again, I imagine little tiny Dick Whitman hearing bits of this story in various arguments and drunken rants over the years and filling in humorous blanks when necessary. Otherwise that's just silly.
"This is the weirdest most disturbing play I've ever seen in my kitchen in the middle of the night."
He snaps out of his reverie when the milk starts boiling over. He carefully skims the skin off the top and discards it, and you know, there's probably something about how the surface seems solid but underneath it's all wobbly and sloshy, or how easily Don can just set aside anything that comes to the surface from the depths, etc. You know. Something people smarter than me could write English papers about.Turns out the milk is for big ole round pregnant Betty, who can't sleep. She seems pretty jubilant for a pregnant insomniac who just a few months ago was having super hot angry bar sex with Captain Awesome and came thisclose to kicking this very husband out on his charming dapper ass for being an unrepentant bastard. But everything's all copacetic at the moment (apart from Sally taking to her father's tools "like a little lesbian" and breaking the clasp on his valise). Betty wants the baby to come into their home at its best, she says, and aww, Don totally learned his lesson! Look at him there, all spooning and whispering happy things to help her sleep and whatnot. New leaf officially turned over, right?
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Comments (7)
Love. Love. Love. Love. your recap! Also, Love. Love. Love. Love. MadMen!
So glad it's back!
1 of 7 | Posted by Dogsnaxx | Posted on August 21, 2009 7:27 PM
This was beautiful!! There's a lot of joy in your writing - you are perfect for this show! Can't wait to read more from you! :)
2 of 7 | Posted by BaileyQuarters | Posted on August 22, 2009 10:23 AM
Wasn't there the possibility of Joan being pregnant last season? I thought there was a reference made to her cravings when she was eating chinese takeout with her fiance.
3 of 7 | Posted by kitty | Posted on August 23, 2009 8:49 AM
MadMen on TVgasm ... I think I'm having a 'gasm
I wondered if Don had trouble remembering Sally's birth day. She would have been born in '58 or '59 when father's paced the waiting room with a cigar box. He mentioned gettng home late, was he playing around with a ready to drop pregnant wife at home?
I also wondered about Joan maybe already being married. Last season she was planning a Christmas wedding, that would have happened during our time away.
Poor Big Gay Sal ... he finally gets his big chance and the alarms go off. I hope that didn't scar him for life!
The casting of this show has got to be the best in the history of tv .. amazing.
4 of 7 | Posted by Quean CeCe | Posted on August 23, 2009 4:13 PM
Good call on Joan, Kitty!
5 of 7 | Posted by Loula | Posted on August 23, 2009 7:22 PM
...and CeCe!
6 of 7 | Posted by Loula | Posted on August 23, 2009 7:24 PM
Loved this recap. I haven't been on this website in a while and was thrilled to see Mad Men recaps here. Your work is so great, fun but your love for the show is evident. Love it.
BTW, I was thinking that Joan actually doesn't have a crush as you have suggested. I think that MP, being new and all, may have been the first person in a very long while to question Joan's authority and judgment as OM. By giving his the office, she was actually setting him up to be reprimanded and brought down a peg by his own boss (of course he took credit for the extra office for visiting home-office executives idea; Joan knew he would). It was like having Pryce remind him that “yes, you are one of the girls.” So his realization that he was working in a gynocracy (under Joan as one of the secretaries) was perfect and, yes, Joan's the "Queen."
7 of 7 | Posted by mamatl | Posted on September 30, 2009 2:25 AM