The ‘Mad Men’ Episode(s) That Got Us Hooked

22:04Rob:This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes. Which is the scene in your episode that you would say most exemplifies what Mad Men can do? I think for me, it's Peggy going on a bad date. It's Elizabeth Moss' favorite scene of season one, she has said.

22:45Who am I to disagree with that? I think you have, in this scene, Peggy is set up on a date by her mom, goes out with this truck driver, a long-haul truck driver. And she's just like constantly chafing against the person she's supposed to be in this context, in any context. It's like she wants to be assertive, but she also needs to be polite. She wants her date to respect what she does for a living, but she does not respect him basically at all from the moment that they sit down. and so it's like it turns into as many things in mad men do a scene about capitalism smuggled into a scene of like dating social mores smuggled into like the awkwardness of just this like very specific exchange between two human beings and so like getting those layers working again with peggy someone who we're just getting to know over the course this season and a guy we've never seen before and you can just feel all the dialogue all the dynamics clicking into place like i think mad Mad Men does that about as well as anybody else.

23:42Like quick introduction of a character who comes to represent something very identifiable very quickly.

23:48Rob:What I really love in that scene is, is it's so human what Peggy is doing because Mad Men refuses to, in both the case of Dawn and Peggy and then Roger and Joan and everyone else, give you a clean person that it's easy to root for or someone that it's easy to hate. you wind up like, I wind up being very emotionally attached to Pete, who is an absolute slime ball, et cetera, et cetera, as the show goes on. For the record, I love, Pete is a great TV character. I love Pete. He would be the worst person in my life, but he's a great TV character. But like, is he going to be okay is actually something I care about.

24:26Rob:I want to know, yeah. But Peggy at this date, continually mentioning like, things about being in the city and cocktails she's had in this city and what it's like in her office. like that deeply insecure, let me remind you of all the things that I think are impressive, that I want who I want to be. I want to present to you that I'm this sophisticated city girl, even though I feel like I'm not there yet, but that's who I want to be. And isn't that what Mad Men is all about? Like I'm Don Draper, I'm not Dick Whitman or whatever the case may be. Or in this case, just like going from the contrast of being the person, whether it's with Joan out on the town, who's being shown around to all these places or in the office, but having to constantly get up to speed.

25:10It's like by contrast, now she feels like the worldly one. She feels like the experienced one. And she's trying to flex that in a way that isn't obnoxious, but it's also obnoxious.

25:20Rob:It's a bit obnoxious, but I feel very soft towards her as she's doing it. The question we wanted to ask ourselves, I skipped ahead to this scene thing, but let's go back to this idea of the character dynamics. You mentioned, of course, the Peggy-Don relationship, which is Mad Men. And so do you want to talk any more specifically about how that is underlined in the episode that you picked? Absolutely. I mean, it's a huge episode for kind of the early stages of the mentorship that starts to take place between the two of them. And I think getting Peggy these early wins, getting Dawn stepping into this role that up until this point, basically, before Peggy kind of starts to move forward in wanting to be a copywriter by sheer force of will, We mostly see him talking down to people, kind of shooting people down, nudging them out of the way, and specifically Pete, just like anytime Pete tries to buddy up to him, smacking him down, it just absolutely despises him.

26:15And so to see Don showing an investment in someone's future beyond whatever it is he's doing today and tomorrow, because that seems to be all he really cares about, that's peeling back completely new layers of that character. And for Peggy, she's getting these big wins. And she's also finding a place in the office in terms of, so far, she's being handed very woman-oriented products that the men just don't even know what to do with. They also don't really know what to do with her. They don't know how to talk around her. They don't know how to be around her. They don't know the— Once she is kind of into the pitch room, they're used to this being their space to make locker room-style jokes.

26:52And now that that space has been infiltrated, they're over-explaining things to Peggy. They're trying to over articulate their entire dynamic. They're still telling those jokes. They're still telling them.

27:03Rob:Yeah. But they're going to try to explain them. By the way, his wife is not Mitch's wife, just so you know. One of my favorite moments in that sequence is at the end. She does a pretty good job and Don has notes. And at the end, Ken is like, good job, Peg. He just doesn't know how to contract. A little punch on the arm. Good job, Peg. Within that mentorship, Don does have notes for her. One of the notes he gives her is like, maybe chill on the academia of like getting into the Latin etymology of the product you're trying to describe, which if you've seen Mad Men, you know, Don basically apes to great effect much later in the season.

27:38So it's like, he's a guy who's always talking out of both sides of his mouth a little bit, but he's awfully persuasive. And at this point in the game, he's very like really useful for Peggy's education on how to do this stuff.

27:50Rob:I think because I can't claim the Peggy and Don relationship inside of this episode, which you and I both agree is a core relationship of the show, what I can claim in my episode is Don's relationship with himself. And the fact that this show starts with the back of Don Draper's head in that sort of iconic Mad Men silhouette and skip ahead a few seconds if you don't want to hear about the famous final shot of Mad Men or whatever, but like ends on Don's face. Like, this is a real journey inside of the heart and soul and mind of the character of Don Draper. That is what Mad Men is. And why do we care about Don Draper?

28:38Rob:In a lot of reasons, because he cares about Peggy. So, like, that is part of it. And I'm not saying she's just part of his story. She has her own story. But fundamentally, the show is most interested in Don Draper. And I think his conflict with himself. Yes. And the way in which he's mirrored back via Rachel, played by Maggie Siff, this character that he has an affair with in season one, echoed back by his family, like, you know, his storybook family, and how he just doesn't see himself there. This is who he's supposed to be, and he just doesn't see himself there. How he's mirrored back by all the other guys, all the other fellas in the office, and he just doesn't see himself there.

29:22Rob:And so Don in search of a reflection that accurately bounces back to him is what the show is about in many ways. And this episode is a big entry point inside of that that I really love about episode three. Absolutely. I also think, to your credit, Joe, I think your episode more accurately and enticingly captures the relationship between Don and his libido. Like, you're getting the early flirtations of his relationship with Rachel in a way that we will see over the course of Mad Men, spoiler alert, I guess, many times with many different women. right um and so it's just like portrayed and hits in a different way you know like the the subtlety of kind of nudging the cuff link back and forth basically like things like that really really hit and really really work uh and are such a huge part of that character and his his want to not just see himself reflected in home life versus alternative but in all of the alternatives that are out there all of these women that he meets there's so they're an infinite number of potential dance.

30:24And one of them is with Rachel, and he seems to be invested and interested in exploring that version a little bit. But seeing the early stages of it is obviously going to be a really captivating experience.

30:36Rob:We are going to talk in a minute about the pilot and why we maybe think it isn't the perfect specimen of what Mad Men can be. But there is a quite famous speech from that episode, the happiness speech, where he talks about advertising is basically you're selling happiness. And he talks about the smell of a new car. And when he talks about that idea. He talks about the smell of a new car. I'm like, that's just Don every time he sends a new woman. He's just like, new car, new me. New woman, new me. Who can I be in this person's eyes? Can I feel good about who I am in their eyes? And in this episode, episode three, it's all going swimmingly until he smooches her and then is like, guess what?

31:15Rob:I'm married. And she's like, what the fuck, dude? And all of a sudden, the knight in shining armor cufflinks because all of a sudden he's quite tarnished. So I really love that. Do you have an MVP of your episode? I think for me, it's Peggy for mine. Again, she gets like the big wins. She gets to be such a huge part of it. She is finding purpose and her role in the office in a way that's really unique. And I think it's unique even among the other kind of like junior executives who all seem to be sort of swirling about trying to play the zero-sum game of office politics, wondering if like Roger dies.

31:50Does that mean one of them gets promoted because Dawn gets promoted. Peggy's one of the only people in the office who has like a clear direction. Like she's getting a raise. She's getting more responsibility. She gets to have her moment to kind of gloat in the sun. That sounds like a winner to me, Jo.

32:05Rob:The fact that yours is Peggy and mine has to be Dawn, I think is kind of perfect. We're a little like match set, I think. And I think - I do think you could make the case for Rachel for yours too. I was going to say, if I had to pick anyone other than Dawn, I would pick Maggie Sif as Rachel. inside of this episode. That would be my runner up for sure. Anything else you want to say before we get to sort of like how this episode sets up the rest of the series? I mean, kind of a bummer that neither of us just by pure coincidence picked very Roger heavy episodes. I love Roger. Another character I think is really important in understanding how Don sees himself.

32:42He like wants to be a counterpart, especially at this point in the story to Roger so clear, like wants to be as equal, wants to be someone to bounce ideas off of. And there's always like that tension between them where that's kind of true, but kind of not. And so having his absence in the story, in my episode in particular, creates a vacuum for Don to suddenly fill. But I just love having him around.

33:03Rob:Yeah. Your episode has a great Joan and Roger scene. Wonderful. And I do like the imagery inside of your episode of Don inside of Roger's office and Pete inside of Don's office and this idea of like constantly striving upwards. like who can I, whose shoes can I step into next? I think all of that is really good. That Joan and Roger scene in particular, again, one of these things where it's like, I can't really tell you with any kind of certainty how some of Roger's lines land with Joan in which they're kind of buffoonish. She's the best piece of ass he's ever had and he doesn't care who knows it.

33:42He doesn't care who knows it. Not as romantic a line as Roger might think, but also it's like the charms of it are not totally lost on Joan in that process. And there's something about just the intimacy of she is in his office to rouge him up, to make him look more lifelike after having a heart attack. It's as close as these two people have been sort of emotionally speaking over the course of the season so far. And to have him deliver a line like that, just as like, as kind of cold and crass and guy's guy as Roger Sterling can be. And it's like, I kind of think Joan likes it and I kind of think she's devastated by it.

34:16And that's the whole game right there.

34:17Rob:And I think, you know, this reminds me of some of the conversations we had about the breaking bad pilot and sort of this idea of finding the characters who are going to matter as the show goes on the idea that john slattery read for don draper yeah and then they pulled him in for roger and john wasn't sure he wanted to do it because he was like this is a tiny character this is a nothing character and then roger just blossoms into becoming so important and is the career defining role for John Slattery, like without question. And then similarly, like I would say Betty's importance comes and goes inside of Mad Men, but she's a footnote in the pilot.

34:58Rob:And then she's the second half of this episode three. And so once again, January Jones just saying sort of like, I read for Peggy. And then they cast me as the wife who had like two lines in the pilot, but like will go on to be more important. I think that's really interesting. In terms of how my episode sets up the rest of the series, something I just want to really underline about Mad Men is how successfully it hit. It wasn't the highest rated show on television and it didn't ever get as popular as something like Breaking Bad did. But the fact that it could hit on so many different levels of depth and interest, I think is really exemplified by my episode in the introduction of the Who is Dick Whitman mystery.

35:46Rob:You've activated the Reddit detectives, which I think is an underrated aspect of the longevity of any show. Do I think that fan theorizing or Reddit theorizing is the most important lens through which you could watch television? No. But I think it is an interesting element of particularly this era of television. When we get into this era, the first kicked off in many ways by The Sopranos, but definitely embodied by a TV show like Lost. And then you have people who... I was watching a panel with Matt Zoller-Sides, who wrote two great books on Mad Men. And Mark Harris, great author, was on this panel and he was talking about, I think it was him, it was either him or Matt said, basically any show you care about that much will become a mystery show.

36:46Rob:Yeah. And so who is Dick Whitman is like, at the end of the day, not the most important question that Mad Men is asking, but it is a hooky thing that got people engaged and then brought people into a world where we could be talking about symbolism and motifs and ennui and what do D.H. Lawrence and Mozart have to do with the themes of this episode I think is all just in the mix inside of episode three which I really love. We can all pretend that we're above that stuff but it just is so instrumental in exactly that way. And you see it, and it shows right now too, like White Lotus is exactly this, right?

37:30This idea of like, oh, it's a murder mystery. Really, it's just a super dense character study. And Mad Men is that stretched out over even longer with all these other trappings. But you need something easy for people to grab onto until the other elements will grab them. And I think that's what the Dick Whitman stuff does as much as anything. That's what all these like, you know, the suicides and the boxes and just like all these mysterious elements, the dog tags, like all of these things. are just trying to keep you on the line long enough that you want to be on the line.

37:58Rob:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. What do you want to say about how episode 11 sets up the rest of the series? I think we covered a lot of it already because I think a lot of it is relationship-driven. It's a lot of understanding the playing field for all of these different people. Like, we talked about Don and Peggy. I also think, like, the Don and Pete stuff is so important. And 11 really hammers home how adversarial their relationship has become, how quickly things have shifted from Pete, like, licking Don's boots to effectively like being incredibly skeptical of everything that he's doing, both in terms of the credit he receives, in terms of who he says he is, like how he presents to the world.

38:33There's just this like disconnect between Pete not understanding why his shit doesn't work on other people, but Don's does. And that's something that can carry like incredible narrative thrust for a show like this. That's the kind of thing that isn't, it's the mechanism for some of these mysteries we're talking about, but at the same time, you're getting at the core of who these characters are.

38:52Rob:One last thing I will say about my episode in the less spoiler way is to talk, just to circle back to this idea of how Mad Men incorporates historical moments into the show in a way that feels character driven. So if the bullet point in history is in 1959, there was a court case about Lady Chatterley's lover. Yes. Like that, that's the boring historical footnote. And then what does this mean to the sexual liberation of the women inside the office is how it is entertained. Or on the ad side of things, here's a famous ad from 1960, Volkswagen, the famous lemon ad. This comes up in episode three, where they're all discussing it.

39:41Rob:So it's sort of like this existed is the boring bullet point, but sort of like, what does it do psychologically to these men whose job is to sell something? the 1950s ideology, and here we are in 1960, and here's something kind of weird and quirky. Winking in a different way. But it is the death of something. It is the death of the 1950 Norman Rockwell into the birth of the wilder 1960s and what that will all bode for all of these people. Not just increasing paisleys and florals in their wardrobe, but like, and the length of their sideburns and stuff like that, but all the other things, all the other ideas that come along with it.

40:27Rob:So I just really love the way that the show throughout can weave those things into natural seeming conversations and character moments inside of the episodes. Absolutely. I mean, it's really hard for shows to make narrative drama out of people not changing or standing still. And I think one thing that Mad Men does really well is like time is marching on. The circumstances, the world around them are changing. But here's this room of guys talking about all of the supposed research saying that cigarettes cause cancer, but they're all still puffing cigarettes. It never occurs to them for a moment to stop what they're doing and reconsider it.

41:01They are just like stones against the tide until all of a sudden that stone gets turned over. And I think Mad Men turns that into something really exciting and really thrilling on a really regular basis that I frankly don't understand how it's possible, but I want to keep watching it.

41:15Rob:it's so funny when we were covering breaking bad last week i was i was looking at you know reading all the old reviews about it reading various essays about it re-watching the episodes and i was like is breaking bad the best tv show that's ever existed i think we do this every week experience with mad men i was like is mad men the greatest tv show that ever existed and like if you ask me today my answer might be yeah i just want it might be like the i guess this this speaks to the very premise of the show, but each time I'm like, is it time for a complete Mad Men rewatch? Is that what I'm gotta do now?

41:48Rob:I don't know. The answer is yes, but for both of these shows, as you alluded to up top, being on AMC at the same time, and they could not be further apart. I mean, obviously they have the sort of like problematic anti-hero leading men type of thing happening, but Breaking Bad is as plot-heavy a show as you will find. Not to say that it doesn't come from a place of character, have other things going for it. I could not tell you what happens, quote unquote, happens in season four of Mad Men, but I can tell you two dozen things that happen between characters that I care about a lot more than that.

42:20And so it just hits in a totally different register and yet is no less effective in doing it.

42:25Rob:I was actually thinking, I had like a sort of a sideways thought, which was that, you know, we uncovered a similar story when investigating this pilot as we do with Breaking Bad, which is that this is a pilot that, you know, Matthew Wainter really wanted to go at HBO. He He wanted this to be an HBO show. And HBO, even though he had done all this work on The Sopranos, HBO didn't even look at it. So then it gets picked up by AMC, who wanted an HBO-like show. And so it becomes an HBO show on AMC. And I would argue Breaking Bad becomes an FX show on AMC. And AMC has a few of these steals and wins over the course of its existence.

43:04Rob:But it's why, even though it was a giant for a few key years with Breaking Bad and Mad Men, it didn't endure in its stature past the ending of the shows. It's like not a coincidence show that if you're just poaching these one-off shows that were meant for other networks, then you zoom out. It's like, what is AMC's broadcast identity? What is the ethos of this network? To this day, I don't really know. Exactly. I still have my AMC Plus subscription because I love Interview with a Vampire. But what is an AMC show is not a question they ever answered satisfactorily. And so this is when you look at the pilot of this show and when you look at the pilot of Breaking Bad, you can see even more the identity of the original networks that they were intended for.

43:49Rob:And then just to talk about the pilot a bit more. Before we even do the pilot, did we hit your standout scene for Marriage of Figaro? Yeah, I would say it's kind of a tie. It's either Don Draper through the lens of his camera at home, or it's the Rachel and Don Draper scene on the roof of the store. A lot of good dogs up there. Really doing the work. Some good boys up there. Are you ready to talk about the pilot? Please. Okay. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is what it's called. Directed by the great Alan Taylor. Written by Matthew Weiner. I think this is a show that doesn't quite have a firm grasp of its tone, doesn't have a firm grasp of its style, its visual style yet, but hit pay dirt with its casting.

44:38Rob:Yes. and has great writing because there's not only the happiness speech that he gives but there's the line about what you call love was invented by guys like me to sell nylons which is the thesis statement of Mad Men so there's a lot to love about this pilot I've just heard from so many people that they can't get into the show from watching it so it was sort of the perfect candidate my view for this series. What do you want to say about the pilot? What works and what doesn't? I think a lot of what we talked about earlier resonates with me in terms of like, if you just don't want to spend time watching women get berated in the workplace or just the general state of society at this point in human history, you're going to bump up against it.

45:27And I think in the pilot in particular, everything is so much more broad. It's just a little too cute about the like, isn't it funny that doctors used to smoke in the office? Isn't it so weird that they used to drink this much on the job? Like it's lingering on that stuff in a way that makes it feel like that is the show versus that's just sort of some of the texture of the show. Right. And they find that over time. They broaden up or they kind of deepen the characters to the point where they're not these sort of like outlines of the people that they are in the pilot. And in doing so, you get into all the juicy stuff that is enticing us back to Mad Men over and over again.

46:01Rob:I would say I don't even really recognize Joan in the pilot episode. um so who might who might just straight up be like the best character on mad men by the end of its run like one of my absolute favorite pieces of the show and so deliciously complicated but the nuance isn't like the shades of her are not there in in the pilot episode so yeah and i think you know as we discussed with breaking bad the pilot has a lot of work it has to do in terms of establishing the who, what, where, when, why of this world. But it's not selling the depth that Mad Men is capable of. And especially, yeah, when you get scenes like all the guys in the elevator sort of leering behind Peggy.

46:47Rob:You know, like all of that. Everything that's ever happened in an elevator in Mad Men is interesting to me, but that's the most cartoonish version of something that will become, it's never, the sexism of Madden and Men is never, I would say, subtle. Not terribly, no. But it is more nuanced and shaded than what is presented in that episode. So, yeah, I would say so. I think that's on all fronts, right? It's about the way that sexism is articulated in the workplace and the behaviors that it influences. It's also how the characters interpret it. And in particular, you see Peggy, who has almost like an allergic reaction to the way that she's being leered at in the office over the course of this season, like almost like on a molecular, like physical level, start sort of rebelling against it.

47:33I think there's a lot of stuff you can unpack there in the same way that, as we were talking about with the historical events, where it's not about, oh, this big thing happened, let's talk about it or throw it on the TV. It's about like, how does that ripple out through all the characters, through all the plot lines, through all this stuff? How do you give these actors who we hit home runs with, honestly, basically across the board, a lot of really juicy stuff to do? And it is very trippy just like watching a time capsule show where Elizabeth Moss is not a starring attraction in and of herself.

48:02Where Jon Hamm is not a starring attraction in and of himself. Like they are holding the screen. They have incredible presence. And they certainly had both been in things. I mean, she'll always be Zoe Bartlett to me. But it's just not the same as what you would walk into a show now that has Elizabeth Moss in it. And that's a headlining opportunity.

48:20Rob:when are you going to be doing your West Wing rewatch podcast I mean I would love to unfortunately I've been I've been out out flanked on the left on the west I mean Rishi K. Shurway basically already crushed this shit so what am I to do fair point this is one of the negative reviews that I picked up of the pilot said this Mad Men seems to be attempting to be satire without a plan. The mood is serious, not campy, and there aren't laugh out loud moments, just a lot of groaners, at which point the show simply becomes a reflection of its characters. Depressing. It turns out that watching moody, cruel men and unsatisfying put upon women for an hour just isn't that much fun.

49:03Rob:That's not how I would describe the Mad Men pilot necessarily, but if you think about things that happen in our episodes, like in my episode, episode three, okay Pete comes back from his honeymoon and they've put a bunch of Chinese people and chickens in his office that's its own level of what the fuck passes as a joke in 1960 but then later when Rachel and Don are leaving the offices and a chicken just walks by and Don's like it's a junior executive like that's really funny they pay that shit off like I don't know what to tell you they It's really funny. And the very premise of what Peggy has to navigate inside of your episode is inherently funny.

49:46Rob:So yeah, I think the comedy beats, which better distinguishes Mad Men from The Sopranos. Mad Men picks up right as The Sopranos ends on TV. And Matthew Weiner taking over as the new quote-unquote David Chase of television. but I can't speak to the tone of Sopranos. I know that it is definitely funny as well as being thrilling and all the other things that it is but it's not the same humorous tone that Mad Men has to offer and I think that's something that only grows over the seasons and is not as indicative in the pilot. And there are great gags and one-liners throughout Mad Men. It's also a show that is a constant exercise in who gets to cut down whom and who gets to throw the barb, who gets to brush somebody off.

50:39And this is something Roger is so great at in terms of his dynamic. And I think one thing that just isn't quite there in season one, I think maybe is a little more present in my episode than yours, but even then not quite there. You need the Burt Cooper daffiness to pop up a little bit here and there. And you need Roger kind of coming in and smoothing things out with a joke. And when he's not in the office, you feel that absence. You feel the self-seriousness of Don's office presence, really. like lording over everybody. It's a very delicate balance in terms of that workplace. And I don't even know when the show really hits its stride in that way.

51:13It's when the cast fills out a little bit. There's some key characters who just haven't been introduced yet at this stage in the show. But it's already hitting at a high enough level that, again, you just want to be along for the ride to see what happens.

51:24Rob:Who's the character you're most missing in these early episodes? I feel like it might be Stan. It's a Stan. It's Stan. I love Stan. We're Stan people. That makes sense. Stan stands, truly. Stan stands, absolutely. Yeah, I agree with all of that. Anything else you want to say specifically about the pilot, which is, you know, is really fun to watch, to your point about watching Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss before they are massive TV stars, which they will become, so. I do want to, and I think we've given it some credit, I want to give all appropriate credit to the pilot on having a lot of the raw materials, like Don's scrawling ideas on a napkin, like some of the elements from the Lucky Strike meeting like you're getting, you're almost getting there it's just that the characters themselves aren't quite there and it's just not finely tuned enough in the way that basically all pilots are not finely tuned enough yeah, absolutely alright, anything else you want to say before we get to any sort of big spoilers that you want to talk about?

52:22I would say just the idea from my episode that pastrami is Yankee barbecue is something that I will be carrying with me for a long time and I had completely forgotten about but is a thousand percent true.

52:33Rob:Oh, okay. You don't find that personally offensive? No, it's exactly what it is. Like a low and slow meat preparation that yields delicious products. Like this checks out to me. It's, you know, it's toasted just like Lucky Strikes. All right. Let's go to big time spoilers if we have any that we want to talk about. I'm going to be honest. I don't have a ton coming off of these episodes. And again, some of it is everything that happens in Mad Men is such a deepening of complexion where it's not like there's a straight line from what happens in these episodes all the way through the end. It's so curvy that I wouldn't even know how to spoil something to have a more thorough conversation about it.

53:10Rob:I think only a couple things popped out to me as sort of almost prophecies for some of these characters. Like Dawn describing what Pete will become, you know, like, you know, with not much hair and nobody likes you. Damn. I mean, we like Pete, but. Or Betty being so judgmental of a divorced woman when Betty herself will become a divorced woman in a few seasons. Baby Kiernan Shipka is here. Of course. And that is really exciting to spend some time with.

53:52And just thinking about trying to reevaluate the ending based on the beginning. like thinking about the way in which the show ends with again don draper not changing fundamentally

54:06Rob:but achieving a bit more peace with who he is um but the bar is low joe i gotta be honest with you the bars in hell and smeared with coca-cola but like it's um i i just love that idea of the beginning of the show, Don as like so dissonant, disconnected. And the end of the show, Don with a smile on his face, both connected to the people around him at this like sort of Esalen meditation retreat. Yes. And using that to sell Coca-Cola. What else would you do with it? Like both of those things are true. What else would you do with perfect clarity into the human experience other than sell something with it.

54:54Rob:Sell Coca-Cola. Alright, anything else you want to say about Mad Men in general, or this experiment specifically? Two things. One, just to echo what you were saying about Betty's role in the show in these episodes and going forward, I think she gets a real short shrift in the way that people talk about Mad Men, in part because, yes, there are stages of the show where she really falls hard into the background. But her presence at this point in this, like, Priscilla locked in the dollhouse kind of role that she's basically forced into playing. Yeah. And the ways that she's like starting to lash out.

55:28Like I forgot how much I love this dynamic of the show. And honestly, how expertly it's played by January Jones, who also gets a tough rap for not being Jon Hamm or Elizabeth Moss sometimes. But I think it's genuinely like pretty great on the show overall.

55:41Rob:Yeah, Betty is a character that I really had to defrost around. And then on every rewatch, I am more and more compelled by and interested in. Yes. And again, it's like goes back to that whole Skylar White thing of just sort of like the wife character who is in the way of your, but not really because Don just does whatever he wants. So it doesn't matter No one is in this man's way, I can assure you. Absolutely not. I think if you haven't rewatched Mad Men in a while or if you haven't tried to hook a friend or a loved one into Mad Men with an episode other than the pilot, I think it's a really good time too and a really good idea.

56:19Rob:I was thinking about, you know, this thing we had around in our Breaking Bad discussion was like, what was the most 2008 thing about this episode? Yeah. We didn't really do this here, but I was really sort of trying to dig into how did this reflect 2007? How did this reflect the Bush era? How did this reflect a country on the verge of the Obama era? And I think that idea of us running on fumes of that immediate post-911, uh, who robbed patriotism, uh, that, that was sort of existing in our culture and how much that had soured for people. Oh yeah. By 2007. And so an indelible image of Mad Men for me is the scene where the Draper family has had a picnic and then they just like stand up and shake out their picnic blanket and just leave all the trash on the beautiful lawn where they have been picnicking and just get in their car and drive away.

57:20Rob:And I'm like, that's something that was on the writers of Mad Men that was on their minds when they were just thinking about America. We were right on the verge of a stock market crash that happened while Mad Men was going on, all this sort of stuff. So if right now you have some questions about how you feel about America and the ideas of America that you've been sold, Mad Men's a perfect sort of reflection meditation to go through as you think about that, I think. I actually think it is a perfectly cynical show for this moment in time, where it interrogates everything, but it doesn't feel overwhelming to the point you would be burdened by it or worn down by it.

58:02So it's like you're not getting the overly saccharine that feels false and you're not getting the so bleak that you're enmeshed in darkness. It's like we're just all living here in the middle trying to make the best of whatever circumstances we got and most of the circumstances are bad and a lot of people are doing weird things, but you know what? We're just trying to sell Coke together, Joe. We're just accidentally inventing vibrators together.

58:24Rob:Heinz beans, Lucky Strike, whatever is up for sale, we want to sell it to you. A car, perhaps, who's to say? Thanks, Rob Mahoney. for going on this journey through Mad Men with me. Thanks to Justin Sales for his work on this feed and letting us do this fun experiment where we watch great television and talk about it a little bit. And thank you to Mad Men expert and aficionado Kai Grady. And we'll be back with another Hooked episode soon. And email us in the meantime, PrestigeTV at Spotify.com with whatever Mad Men episode you think is the best episode to hook people with. I would genuinely love to hear people's ideas because as we said, There's a wide range of possibilities with this one.

59:06We did consider, we should say, we did consider The Wheel, which is the finale of season one, but that just felt even a little too far for us.

59:16Rob:So, but that, I mean, the carousel speech is so, you know, the carousel speech is, this is a post-credit sequence of this podcast, I guess. The carousel speech is the Walt and Jesse dissolved body in a bathtub. It's true. You know, what is the moment? So that's definitely on our minds. But yeah, PrestigeTV at Spotify.com. The question we had is, does it pay off without things like Marriage of Figaro? If you don't have the footage, if you don't see the domestic life, does it hit the way that it ultimately does? Because, yeah, once you get there on honest terms, watching through the first season, like you are radicalized to love this show.

59:59Rob:Join us in our love for Mad Men if you haven't already, and we will see you soon. Bye!