[Recap] Mad Men – The Beautiful Girls (With Spoilers)

At this point, saying Mad Men stepped up their game is redundant and superfluous. I mean, at a certain point Mad Men becomes this skyscraper just towering over every other building downtown. Which brings me to the quote of the evening (so spoilers begin here if you’re the skittish type):

“She was born in 1898 in a barn, she died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper, she’s an astronaut.”

I won’t say who died, or who the quote comes from, so it’s not a complete spoiler, more one of those “scoops” Entertainment Weekly likes to band about. The episode itself feels at a crossroads. On the one hand we have the title, The Beautiful Girls, and the episode makes a point of explaining exactly who those girls are. Peggy Olsen, Joan Harris, and Dr. Faye Miller all get to push forward their narrative threads this week.

At the same time, yeah this isn’t going to work without spoilers, Don’s secretary Ida Blackenship, remember how it was revealed in Roger Sterling’s biography that they were an item at one point (ep 407 – The Suitcase) well one can imagine that something happening to Ida would cause the old guard of Sterling and Cooper to contemplate their own mortality.

Peggy’s journey has always been about women’s progression in the workplace, but while up to this point it’s been about Peggy’s exceptionality, the show takes a bit of a step back this week to show the world around Peggy. Her friend Joyce, who looked to be in pursuit of Peggy and obviously still has the hots for her (as evidenced by licking the side of her face) this week serves as a catalyst for Peggy questioning just about everything. Joyce brings Abe Drexler, the guy Peggy met at the party Joyce took her to, to a bar to reconnect with Peggy. Like a good pseudo intellectual artist hanging out in Manhattan but originally from Brooklyn, Abe is super upset about the plight of the negroes and thinks capitalism is just a hairs breath from being overthrown, that a revolution could happen in America at any point.

Peggy’s not buying his tripe, but he does get one earworm to stick with Peggy. Why would her firm represent a client who refuses to hire black people? Peggy stands by her firms role, even so far as to say that doing Goldwater’s campaign would have been a great challenge. From her perspective, advertisers are in a position to change a companies values. In a way they are, when it comes to updating what consumers want, but it’s harder to speak for a consumer’s shifting values, especially when it comes to a very tumultuous time in the South.

But at the bar, her reaction is to tell Abe that many of the things black people can’t do she can’t do either. She’s not allowed into the country clubs and gentlemen’s clubs where many if not most business deals are being made. Abe makes a patronizing comment about “maybe we’ll have a civil rights march for women” but basically Abe concludes that since there isn’t violence being used against women (which is completely absurd, domestic violence is still a problem in America) to stop them from participating in society, then women didn’t have it so bad.

Dr. Miller has her story pushed forward by miniature catalyst Sally Draper. If we can all agree that Betty Francis (as she’s now known) should never ever be allowed to be a child’s primary caretaker, then we can understand why little Sally would stow away on a train to spend time with her father. She loves her father. All she wants to do is spend a day at the zoo with this man she adores. He’s the reason she cut her own hair, to look like the women she thought her dad was bringing home. So of course, Don being Don, he wants to care for her but is primarily loyal to the company. Since main catalyst x kicked the bucket (I still refuse to say who, but it should be obvious by now) her duties get quite unfairly dumped onto Faye without much debate. Faye is polite with Sally, and for the most part vice versa, but it’s clear that Faye is out of her element. Here we get Faye’s big character moment; she hasn’t had kids and as a result, isn’t very good with kids. She’s proud of her career choices and doesn’t look at not having kids as a failure, but it’s clear she’s upset at Don for making her face this reality head on.

Then there’s Joan. Since Ida, or catalyst x, was intimate with Roger back in the day, he’s feeling his mortality pretty hard. There’s nothing an old man staring in the face of death wants more than to feel young and virile again, so of course Roger starts pressing his old fling Joan. She’s in a prickly spot because she’s just learned Mr. Harris is not coming back after basic, he’s being shipped out to Vietnam. Joan’s a bit off her game though always professional, which unfortunately one can never say for Roger, who’s always on his game and never professional. After sending a masseuse to Joan’s apartment, her invites her out to dinner. In a great bit of subtle political theater, the restaurant he used to go to in his younger days now has older clientele and the surrounding neighborhood on Broadway got a lot rougher. One mugging later, and Roger and Joan are having near death experience sex.

Sidenote: British series Ashes to Ashes once did a similar thing but in reverse. Alex Drake, from the future, walking in Chelsea of the past, which was all strip clubs and liquor stores, remarks “you’ll all be restaurants someday”. Much less pointed than getting mugged in what once used to be a happening neighborhood, but the points the same. City neighborhoods cycle almost decade to decade, and it can be tough to keep up.

Anyhow, so now Joan is dealing with being married and well having extra-marital near death experience sex with someone she’s got a history with. So at the end of the episode, when beautiful Joyce leaves on an elevator, and then Faye, Peggy and Joan all share another, it was clear that all the beautiful girls are all about to embark on very different, but all progressive and meaningful lives.

In Memoriam

Ida Blackenship