What can we take from "The Suitcase," widely felt to be the single greatest episode in seven celebrated seasons of "Mad Men"?
(1) Top spin. Weiner's show (and Weiner wrote this particular episode) was always designed to be a vehicle for "tension and irony." Weiner himself said that before the show ever appeared on-air.
A line of dialogue has "top spin" when there's a meaning underneath a literal meaning. Weiner really loves subtext; he loves it almost to a fault. (I am one viewer who desperately wanted a few more sincere, heartfelt conversations in the long history of "Mad Men"--not because I can't tolerate scheming characters, but because I think sincerity and heart do actually exist in the world, and MM became a bit stilted, at times, by seeming not to agree with me!)
All that said, the "top spin" in "The Suitcase" is fabulous. "Why is there a dog in the Parthenon?" "You're twenty-six: That's still very young!" "I thought we were doing this at nine. It's now eleven-thirty." "Do you want the door open or closed?" These are all lines that do more work than they might--at first--seem to do. Keeping track of the unstated, making inferences about the real intention under the faux-intention: This is the pleasure of watching "Mad Men."
(2) The only constant is change. The casual racism and sexism of "Mad Men" characters generated many "think pieces." On one hand, you could say this trick feels "cheap"; it's condescending to history; it encourages us to feel good about ourselves, because of course we would never indulge in the ugliness these characters regularly indulge in. ("Cassius Clay? If I wanted to see two black men fight, I'd just go out to the alley behind my apartment." "Peggy, come have lunch with the boys. It's your birthday: We'll let you talk." "You're witty! Good for you.")
A more charitable reading: Weiner is suggesting that we actually still have ugliness in us, but it's just taking new forms. We can't recognize our own twenty-first century cannibalism, because we are too busy living it. Only several decades from now will it become clear that we're just as reprehensible as the main cast of "Mad Men."
(3) Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun. "Mad Men" is, clearly, the spiritual stepson of "The Sopranos." One lesson Weiner took from David Chase: Write female characters as scintillating as the male characters, and write several, as opposed to one. "Sopranos": Carmela, Dr. Melfi, Meadow, Janice, Livia, Adriana, Gloria Trillo. "Mad Men": Betty, Trudy, Peggy, Joan, Sally, Ida Blankenship, Rachel Menken.
I went back to "Mad Men" because I was enjoying Alison Brie in "Glow," an inferior show. If you want to see the difference between competence and genius, watch Brie in her new Netflix outing, then go back and watch her on "Mad Men."
Also, keep an eye on Ida in "The Suitcase." Her role, in that hour, is among my favorites (not because I admire the character--I don't--but because the writing is so sharp). She has her moment of casual racism, she has her secret sexy hell-cat past, and she has her stunning, cloddish misreading of Don's needs. "A call from California," she says. "Do you want me to dial for you?" Don says no, clearly and slowly, and seems disturbed. Later, she asks again if she can dial, because when we are inadequate we look for small ways to redeem ourselves. (And this looking is its own irritating form of neediness.) Don says, "No," politely, and Peggy reads through layers of obfuscating subtext. Peggy cuts to the chase: "Why don't you just fire her?"
(4) Amour fou. So much dazzles the viewer in "The Suitcase," but one of the things I love most is how Peggy *actively chooses* martyrdom. She *could* leave Don in the office. She *could* go and have her dinner with her boyfriend. She could do these things almost with impunity. But how can this boyfriend compete with Don Draper? Come on.
So--after choosing martyrdom--we see Peggy savoring the pleasures of being aggrieved. (How many other TV shows have such smart and observant writing?) Peggy is almost overjoyed to bring up the way she was jilted at the Clio Awards: You can see that under the simmering rage. As the power balance shifts, and shifts again, Peggy seems to take over the episode. More than once, we see Don in a babyish position: sprawled on the floor, or resting his head in Peggy's lap. The inevitable conclusion: "A friend died," says Don. "The only person in the world who really knew who I was, who I am." And Peggy, dripping with multiple meanings: "Well, *that* is not true."
The symbolic ending: Peggy channels her own secretary days by asking if Don's door should be closed or open. And we see a new Don, one willing to make himself vulnerable: "Let's go with an open door."
It's no secret that Peggy Olson is an icon for gay men. She is among my two or three favorite characters in TV history. For a long while, gay writer Adam Goldman had an image of Peggy plastered all over his Twitter account. The thing that is so appealing about this character is that--despite her modest standing in the world--she can see through nonsense in a way that the strutting heterosexual men around her (e.g. Don) simply cannot. She wears masks; she uses "code-switching"; she is scrappy and smart. (She's also flawed.) Peggy feels the way many gay men feel in the U.S., in 2018; in many episodes, Peggy is each of us at our very best.
(5) Miscellany. You can invite your girlfriend's oppressive mother to a birthday party--as a way of attaining Great Boyfriend status--and you can fail to think, even for a moment, that this isn't what your girlfriend wants. (Who among us has not been in a boat like this?)
"Feud" tells us that great enmity isn't about hatred. It's about pain. "Mad Men" shows so well the kind of nastiness that can pop up when you and your enemy are both powerless. I'm talking about the bathroom exchange between Trudy and Peggy. Trudy is so awful to Peggy--and it's not even clear that Trudy recognizes the extent of her own awfulness. And Peggy holds her cards close to her chest: Breathtaking. "Tension and irony": The pregnant Trudy and the svelte Peggy walk toward Pete together, and we know (and Trudy does not) that Peggy has already produced a Little Pete, a Pete, Jr., who hides in some tiny room in Brooklyn.
The last thing I love in this episode: Peggy has fun. She is flirty and delighted in her mock Samsonite commercial. She's exploiting a stereotype, and she's aware of what she is doing, and she's clearly having a blast. Such a treat to watch--and it's a sin that Moss never won an Emmy for this show.
And that's all I have w/r/t "Mad Men" today! Skip "Glow"! Go for the gold.
(1) Top spin. Weiner's show (and Weiner wrote this particular episode) was always designed to be a vehicle for "tension and irony." Weiner himself said that before the show ever appeared on-air.
A line of dialogue has "top spin" when there's a meaning underneath a literal meaning. Weiner really loves subtext; he loves it almost to a fault. (I am one viewer who desperately wanted a few more sincere, heartfelt conversations in the long history of "Mad Men"--not because I can't tolerate scheming characters, but because I think sincerity and heart do actually exist in the world, and MM became a bit stilted, at times, by seeming not to agree with me!)
All that said, the "top spin" in "The Suitcase" is fabulous. "Why is there a dog in the Parthenon?" "You're twenty-six: That's still very young!" "I thought we were doing this at nine. It's now eleven-thirty." "Do you want the door open or closed?" These are all lines that do more work than they might--at first--seem to do. Keeping track of the unstated, making inferences about the real intention under the faux-intention: This is the pleasure of watching "Mad Men."
(2) The only constant is change. The casual racism and sexism of "Mad Men" characters generated many "think pieces." On one hand, you could say this trick feels "cheap"; it's condescending to history; it encourages us to feel good about ourselves, because of course we would never indulge in the ugliness these characters regularly indulge in. ("Cassius Clay? If I wanted to see two black men fight, I'd just go out to the alley behind my apartment." "Peggy, come have lunch with the boys. It's your birthday: We'll let you talk." "You're witty! Good for you.")
A more charitable reading: Weiner is suggesting that we actually still have ugliness in us, but it's just taking new forms. We can't recognize our own twenty-first century cannibalism, because we are too busy living it. Only several decades from now will it become clear that we're just as reprehensible as the main cast of "Mad Men."
(3) Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun. "Mad Men" is, clearly, the spiritual stepson of "The Sopranos." One lesson Weiner took from David Chase: Write female characters as scintillating as the male characters, and write several, as opposed to one. "Sopranos": Carmela, Dr. Melfi, Meadow, Janice, Livia, Adriana, Gloria Trillo. "Mad Men": Betty, Trudy, Peggy, Joan, Sally, Ida Blankenship, Rachel Menken.
I went back to "Mad Men" because I was enjoying Alison Brie in "Glow," an inferior show. If you want to see the difference between competence and genius, watch Brie in her new Netflix outing, then go back and watch her on "Mad Men."
Also, keep an eye on Ida in "The Suitcase." Her role, in that hour, is among my favorites (not because I admire the character--I don't--but because the writing is so sharp). She has her moment of casual racism, she has her secret sexy hell-cat past, and she has her stunning, cloddish misreading of Don's needs. "A call from California," she says. "Do you want me to dial for you?" Don says no, clearly and slowly, and seems disturbed. Later, she asks again if she can dial, because when we are inadequate we look for small ways to redeem ourselves. (And this looking is its own irritating form of neediness.) Don says, "No," politely, and Peggy reads through layers of obfuscating subtext. Peggy cuts to the chase: "Why don't you just fire her?"
(4) Amour fou. So much dazzles the viewer in "The Suitcase," but one of the things I love most is how Peggy *actively chooses* martyrdom. She *could* leave Don in the office. She *could* go and have her dinner with her boyfriend. She could do these things almost with impunity. But how can this boyfriend compete with Don Draper? Come on.
So--after choosing martyrdom--we see Peggy savoring the pleasures of being aggrieved. (How many other TV shows have such smart and observant writing?) Peggy is almost overjoyed to bring up the way she was jilted at the Clio Awards: You can see that under the simmering rage. As the power balance shifts, and shifts again, Peggy seems to take over the episode. More than once, we see Don in a babyish position: sprawled on the floor, or resting his head in Peggy's lap. The inevitable conclusion: "A friend died," says Don. "The only person in the world who really knew who I was, who I am." And Peggy, dripping with multiple meanings: "Well, *that* is not true."
The symbolic ending: Peggy channels her own secretary days by asking if Don's door should be closed or open. And we see a new Don, one willing to make himself vulnerable: "Let's go with an open door."
It's no secret that Peggy Olson is an icon for gay men. She is among my two or three favorite characters in TV history. For a long while, gay writer Adam Goldman had an image of Peggy plastered all over his Twitter account. The thing that is so appealing about this character is that--despite her modest standing in the world--she can see through nonsense in a way that the strutting heterosexual men around her (e.g. Don) simply cannot. She wears masks; she uses "code-switching"; she is scrappy and smart. (She's also flawed.) Peggy feels the way many gay men feel in the U.S., in 2018; in many episodes, Peggy is each of us at our very best.
(5) Miscellany. You can invite your girlfriend's oppressive mother to a birthday party--as a way of attaining Great Boyfriend status--and you can fail to think, even for a moment, that this isn't what your girlfriend wants. (Who among us has not been in a boat like this?)
"Feud" tells us that great enmity isn't about hatred. It's about pain. "Mad Men" shows so well the kind of nastiness that can pop up when you and your enemy are both powerless. I'm talking about the bathroom exchange between Trudy and Peggy. Trudy is so awful to Peggy--and it's not even clear that Trudy recognizes the extent of her own awfulness. And Peggy holds her cards close to her chest: Breathtaking. "Tension and irony": The pregnant Trudy and the svelte Peggy walk toward Pete together, and we know (and Trudy does not) that Peggy has already produced a Little Pete, a Pete, Jr., who hides in some tiny room in Brooklyn.
The last thing I love in this episode: Peggy has fun. She is flirty and delighted in her mock Samsonite commercial. She's exploiting a stereotype, and she's aware of what she is doing, and she's clearly having a blast. Such a treat to watch--and it's a sin that Moss never won an Emmy for this show.
And that's all I have w/r/t "Mad Men" today! Skip "Glow"! Go for the gold.
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