Baby's first LOLdon.
It was fun watching people take out their frustrations on each other this week. Just kidding, it was harrowing and depressing.
Last Week:
Don and Betty were a hot, sexytime couple for basically the first time ever, jet-setting in a vision of Rome that was very like the backdrop of a James Bond flick. Pete was the worst ever, and Trudy offered him concilatory cold salads.
There was mutiny in my household and among my guests. No one wants to play my Crazy Foods From The Sixties game anymore. The appelkaka was the last straw. These people feel that we have proved a point, which is that food from the sixties was largely terrible, and they do not feel obligated to join me in watching Mad Men if I continue to serve terrible things to eat.
I considered being a visionary, one who pushes her art on the masses, but, frankly, even I was getting tired of putting huge amounts of effort into things that were inedible. So! It was fun, but I think the food is going to look a lot more like contemporary spins on what the people of Mad Men were eating.
This week was the Delicious Food kick-off, and, I have to say, we went all out.
In honor of the demise of Gourmet, we prepared one of my very favorite Gourmet recipes ever: Tagliatelle with Chestnuts, Pancetta, and Sage. I had the brain flash to replace the pancetta with Boccalone guanciale I had lying around (by “lying around” I meant “was feverishly thinking up ways to use”). Sidebar: guanciale is better than bacon. Don’t worry, I’m not saying bacon is not the best ever. It is. Just if there were something better than the best ever it would be guanciale.
So, if you are planning to replicate my efforts, replace the pancetta with guanciale, and also ask your brother-in-law, who is a CCA-trained professional chef, to make fresh tagliatelle.
Oh, your brother-in-law is not a professional chef? No fresh tagliatelle for you. A pity, since the leftover fresh pasta was delectable tossed in browned butter and sage.
You should be shopping for a higher-quality brother-in-law.
In other news, I also sent a shout-out to Trudy (someone ought to!) with two cold salads.
Hearts of palm marinated in white wine, red spring onion, and parsley. Trudy would have used mayonnaise.
I updated a recipe from the Hostess Cookbook that called for frozen limeade concentrate and, among other things, frozen blueberries:
Composed fruit salad with a dressing of orange and lime juices, honey, ginger, black pepper, and orange flower water.
They will pry the Hostess Cookbook from my cold, dead, aspic-coated hands.
This Week:
Recurring themes: Demanding phone calls. Revealing secrets. Mean role models. Profound disappointments. Everyone was either :( or >:( .
It’s hard for me to even make jokes about this week’s episode. It was one of the most harrowing yet. Even Betty’s flirtation with Henry was poignant. Don’s interplay with Conrad Hilton was surprisingly heartbreaking. And Sal…oh, Sal.
All three storylines began on such buoyant notes. Watching the episode again (and again,) this really isn’t true. Now that I know what’s coming, all three storylines really began with sexual overtures in three illicit relationships in which one person is married. Lee Garner, Jr., the Lucky Strike heir, is, from the beginning, inventing excuses to interact with Sal — and they’re flustering Sal, and not in a good way. Don turns an early-morning trip to the office into a quasi-first date with Sally’s teacher, Miss Farrell. And Betty starts out writing mash notes to Henry.
if u like me check "yes" if you dont like me check "no"
All three relationships involve power imbalances. In both the Don/Miss Farrell and Betty/Henry relationships, the women temporarily hold the power. (Remember that the episode title derives from the song, “In the Wee Small Hours Of The Morning,” when a man waits for his female lover — who is holding all the strings — to call.) Miss Farrell has been seeking out Don’s attention, then deflecting it, for months, and he’s finally interested. In the same vein, Betty has been actively pursuing Henry by encouraging Henry to pursue her. Over the course of the episode, both men move in for the pounce — with different results. Don comes to Miss Farrell, and he is rewarded. Henry forces Betty to come to him, and Betty turns him down.
Clearly, in the world of Mad Men, the world is designed to facilitate married men’s affairs, while making it incredibly difficult for a married woman to have a discreet liaison. Don and Miss Farrell are rehearsing ancient roles, that of married man and mistress. Betty, having few examples before her, can’t come to a comfortable detente with Henry. And, meanwhile, for Sal, there is no example at all.
While Don and Betty are involved in affairs that at least hold the promise of romance, Sal finds himself propositioned by a man with no such illusions. Garner is looking for a quickie in an editing room. And not just looking for it — expecting it. In Don and Betty’s examples, the man is the aggressor, to be alternately enticed and repelled. Meanwhile, Sal is not interested in meekly acquiescing to Garner’s demands. He doesn’t put him off the way that Betty might (with a wall of cool reserve) — or Joan might (in a teasing way that bolsters the man’s dignity). Betty and Joan know the “rules,” but Sal is in uncharted waters.
Thus, when Don has the opportunity to stand up for Sal, Don tries to impose his own rules on Sal. Sal, as one of “those people” — it sounds so horrible when Don says it, and the look on Sal’s face is heartbreaking — should have just submitted to Garner, the way Joan did to her husband, the way Gudrun did to Pete. Don has no script for what two men should do in this situation: he simply slips Sal into what Don sees as the “female” role. Placate the client, by any means necessary. If it had been Peggy, he would have told her to do the same thing.
It’s such a betrayal, but especially in the Mad Men universe. In this episode, Sal is cast out of the boy’s club — the world he has tried, so hard, to belong to, the world where men flip through Playboy in business meetings and ogle actresses at casting calls. The world where the men hold all the power and the women jockey for glimpses of it.
When Peggy was “in trouble,” Don covered for her, mentored her, and ensured her success. When sex, or the possibility, gets Sal into trouble, Don, looking down his nose, tells Sal he has less power than Peggy, Betty, or even Miss Farrell. To be gay is, for Don, to be less than a woman.
Given how Don treats women, that means less than nothing.
In Sal’s final scene, Sal — the only person in this episode who hasn’t even considered cheating on his spouse — is, ironically, lying to his wife. Not about an affair, or his sexuality, but about having a job.
Our opinions divided on this, but my conclusion, based on the shady young men pairing off in the background, was that Sal was off to pick a guy up in the park. In Sal’s new life, there’s no “Prelude to a Kiss” — the song that plays over the closing credits — only anonymous sex.
One final note:
Betty, sighing sadly, tells Carla, who has been listening to Martin Luther King’s sermon on the terrorist Birmingham Church Bombing — when four little girls were murdered — “it’s really made me wonder about Civil Rights. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen right now.”
You can tell which two words Carla is thinking. Hint: One of them starts with the second letter of the alphabet, and the other one is please.
Sal and Carla reminded us that, while Betty and Don dither over romances and marital squabbles, the “real” sixties — where people are being murdered just because of who they are — are happening out there, somewhere. Even Betty and Don feel the societal malaise. They just can’t identify the source.
Next week, we will console ourselves with fried chicken, at Conrad Hilton’s request. And we will figure out what is in the black bottle — from the top of the kitchen cupboard — Don drinks from at least twice this episode.
Some of Connie’s moonshine, perhaps? (Perhaps I will brew moonshine? Just kidding, ATF!)
Post a Comment