Mad Men Season 4 Unpopular Opinions
Here are my Mad Men Season 4 UOs. My UOs came out easier for early West Wing and later Mad Men....
1. I don't give a damn that the accountant, Frank Keller, and Henry Francis was on Don's side and Betty looked unreasonable. Don was an ass to get all hepped up that Betty was two months late from moving out the Ossining house from their agreed upon date and to start demanding a move-out date and rent.
Yes, I do think that Betty wasn't even looking for a house in the long period that she was supposed to (December of 1963 through Thanksgiving of 1964) partly out of spite and problematic issue with moving on from her first marriage instead of holding onto the grudge and hurt. However, Betty was straight-up busy and stressed out from all of the change- her father died, new baby, divorce from Don, remarriage to Herny- ALL IN A YEAR. It's a lot to add in relocating her and her three kids to an entirely new house. She just re-decorated the Ossining house in the summer of 1963, just to find that Don's entire identity was a lie in the fall of 1963. Just because spite dominated her affect in how she refused to move, and then how she did want to move, doesn't mean that the overwhelmingness of change didn't drive that spite. (IMO, Betty gained so much weight before S5 because of stress-eating more than Pauline's accusation that she got "too comfortable.")
I don't think the Ossining house was this huge financial burden for Don, especially since IMO, real estate taxes and insurance weren't nearly as relatively high back in the 1960s. Henry made a point of paying for stuff like clothes and food for the Draper children for the personal vanity feelings of Betty not owning Don anything. So (IMO, mainly out of Betty's and Henry's folly), Don got off easy with child-support, even if it's unclear exactly how it shook out, and he got away entirely with alimony since Betty just upped and remarried right away. So, a huge boo hoo that super-wealthy Don has to pay for a house where the majority of the residents are his children and his responsibility.
More to the point, given how Don behaved in the marriage, he doesn't have the authority to get on a moral high horse about agreed-upon move out dates. But it's pretty interesting how Frank Keller and Henry totally validate Don's petty wrongness in-story.
Frank Keller is just acting on his straight-forward fiduciary duty to give Don good financial advice. Fine. However, there's subtext on Mad Men that wealthy guys practically have a gang of lawyers, accountants, partners to validate any problematic behavior in their personal life, under the cover of "smart business practices." Frank doesn't know Betty or why their marriage broke up (even if it's reasonable assumption that it was because the husband was screwing around in that world). However, Frank operates from a position that unmet Betty has to be fucking Don over by not moving out by the agreed date or that he has to save Don from himself because it's such an ostensibly bad thing to give the bitch ex-wife access to the Draper children's trust funds, no matter if Sally actually had seven years to go until she became eighteen and Gene had *seventeen* years to go and giving Betty access would be prudent, even if Don didn't feel, at the time, that he may need to go on the lam from the government because of the desertion.
Meanwhile, I know exactly why Henry was all soberly,"I know you don't want to hear this, but he's right." He wanted to make his own house, suited to his tastes. (More old-fashioned mansion than modern McMansion). However, Henry jumped to a chance to be the high-handed arbiter of justice instead of just straight-forwardly saying that he'd like to move for him.
2. Within that, I don't think Henry was such an angel to Betty's demon-woman in S4. I think he was disingenuous in Public Relations- both in this instance and IMO, he didn't make nearly a strong enough stand to Pauline when she was all "Henry, I don't understand how you can stand living in that man's dirt" because he wanted his choices validated, but also some motherly sympathy at his situation's difficulty. So, he didn't work nearly hard enough to argue that Betty and her children are not....*dirt*. He was great in The Chrysanthenum and the Sword, in defending Sally from Betty and calming Betty down and suggesting Sally see a psychiatrist. And he may have been shouty and angry at Betty in Tomorrowland- but suddenly firing Carla without a reference, despite Carla's years of service to the family, demands quite a bit of anger to be thrown Betty's way (without even knowing the whole S4 Betty/Glenn/Sally dynamic which puts Betty in an even worse light).
However, I think he was an ass in The Summer Man. I don't get how Betty wouldn't be upset at seeing Don out on a date with a younger version of herself. That would upset people who were five years divorced, let alone one year divorced. Yes, Betty was difficult to deal with that evening. However, it's ridiculous that Henry couldn't just ride it out, either stay quiet through Betty's rantings if he's feeling too jealous and upset to engage or muster up the selflessness to say something comforting. However, I roll my eyes so hard at:
Betty: I hate him.
Henry: Hate's a strong word, Betty. I hate Nazis.
Henry can shut it with policing Betty saying, "I need a drink." You *need* a drink?! That's not something you get to say.
3. I'm mostly on Don's side in the Don v. Peggy conflicts this season- although not entirely. Of course, it's complicated with those two. I'm going to diagram their conflicts this season. (Maybe I'll discuss Tomorrowland in the addendum- although I don't think I'm that UO about it.)
For Public Relations, I'm sorry but Peggy (and Pete) done screwed up. If you have to call your boss for $280 in bribes and bail money ($2,149.18 adjusted for inflation) on Thanksgiving when the banks are closed, it's a fuck-up. Even if ham sales went up or "Our hams are worth fighting for" is some cute copy. Peggy's lucky that ahem Dick Whitman is a weirdo who keeps an ungodly amount cash lyin' around in case he needs to get gone. They were so hot-to-trot to get ham sales up, that they orchestrated a fight between two hot-tempered, unreliable, uncouth, under paid poor actresses and then, didn't excise enough powers of persuasion or caution to make sure that it wouldn't blow up in everyone's faces. If the actresses followed through on their threat and tried to tell a reporter that SCDP got them to have a fake fight over ham (that apparently ended up being a new sensation and made it into the papers and started a line for Sugarberry ham), that would be a disaster for SCDP and Sugarberry ham.
And I dunno, it's true that Peggy DID have an OK from a partner in Pete. But Pete's a junior partner and not in charge of creative. So, I think Don was absolutely right to be angry. He crossed over a line a little into *too harsh* by belaboring, "DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO THINK WE'RE IDIOTS, PEGGY?" but the rest of the time, I think his anger may have been not fun for Peggy to hear but a pretty correct, within-boundaries dissection of how much she really did fuck up.
However, the next day, Peggy basically sailed into the office with the free sample ham to inform Don that sales went up, like that was total absolution of her failure to control the situation and properly inform her boss that she was staging a very public fistfight over ham. I think Don and Peggy are stuck, especially once they moved to SCDP. Peggy wants to advance, but the only way she can do that in that company, is to take over Don's job since she was the second in command. Thus, Don is always the target that she'd like to destroy. Meanwhile, Don never wanted to fire or demote Peggy, no matter what, because she's talented and he loves her but he does frequently wants to bring her to heel because she's a competitor and because she tests her limits A LOT with him because she really does know that he'll never fire her and that infuriates him. So, he gets a high on yelling at her.
However, you can only yell at someone so many times before they're just sick of hearing your voice and regard you as The Asshole, especially if it's never going to backed up with real hard-power like a firing which is the only way to definitely show a employee that they're more trouble than they're worth. However, yes, it actually *is* hard for Don because like, *I* agree Peggy is talented enough that he shouldn't fire her even if she's unbelievably disrespectful and pulls some stupid heists like this. She's NOT more trouble than she's worth- but she is some amount of trouble.
So, even at this juncture, I don't even think Peggy heard the correct content of what Don was saying enough for it to stick as a lesson. Even though it should have because as I said earlier, Peggy and Pete done screwed up. Yes, Mark reported that she was "agonizing" over how the actresses were locked up for the escalating fight and threatening to tell the news that the fight was staged- but I think Peggy stopped agonizing once she got the bribe/bail money and a free sample of thank-you hams and then rewrote the whole situation in her head that she's awesomely brought up ham sales and Don was a jerk about it. LOL, I've done that before so it's not like I don't get it- but *I've* felt a special kind of guilt once I realized that I forgot/underrated my original mistake just because someone else cleaned up my mess but maybe yelled at me too much for my comfort.
Moreover, Peggy's parting shot of, "Well, nobody knows about the ham stunt, so our IMAGE remains pretty much where you left it" to mock Don for his non-charming interview was about as harsh as anything Don said in his reprimand. So at the end of the day, they were equal on harshness but Don was right on content and chain of command.
To double-score my point, I liked Don's Why I'm Quitting Tobacco letter way more than Peggy's ham-stunt. They're both genuinely clever shenanigans but Don was reacting to "desperate times call for desperate measures" and that was the solution he found for agency to not be seen as "stagnant or even decaying." Don took and absorbed the risks of the letter as the senior partner and Creative Director. And even though Don had no noble motives to weaken the tobacco companies and encourage anti-smoking efforts, The Letter DID jump-start enough of a conversation about cigarettes' health risks that the American Cancer Society thought it was one of the most substantive achievements of 1965. The ham-fight didn't do any of that.
However, I'd never dream of saying that Don should be above hearing his partners' harsh criticisms of his actions. They had every right to be upset and yell at him because he took a big risk without consulting them, even though he very well could have. So, Bert out and out called Don "cynical and craven" and saying that he "never though you had the stomach for a partnership" is harsher than anything Don said to Peggy in Public Relations. Bert was yelled at Don for something that *I* feel was a fairly brilliant manipulation of the media. Bert still had every right to do that because it's infuriating for someone to play high-wire hijinks with the reputation of the agency, without so much as consulting others, whether the person is a senior partner or an employee without an interest in the agency. And if Don wants to play those games, he should take the blow-back too.
I don't subscribe to the notion that Peggy is such a precious flower that she should be shielded from that kind of blow-back and Don should just hand over the bribe/bail money and give Peggy a gold star.
4. As for the Glo-Coat credit, again, I was mostly on Don's side. Yup, I agree THAT'S WHAT THE MONEY IS FOR. In exchange for a regular salary and a steady supply of business, Peggy agrees to give her ideas to the partners, namely her Creative Director boss and he gets the credit (or even the blame) for how the idea plays in the wider world. That's how creative agencies work, how writers' rooms work, how law firms work. This time, the Glo-Coat commercial was an award-winning success. If Don accepted Peggy's idea but it was a failure (there was a lawsuit stemming , the client later hated it), it would be Don's responsibility.
You know, I'd even feel that way even if the entire idea was Peggy's because Don bought the idea with her salary. However, it wasn't. Peggy provided the base outline- "No, it was something about a kid locked in a closet because his mother was making him wait for the floor to dry."
However, I think the Glo-Coat commercial would have been average if it was just literally that idea. However according to Peggy's own resentful statement ("Don put the whole cowboy thing on it") and Don's description of how he always wanted to make a commercial that was like a movie..."at least for the first ten seconds", Don made that outline idea into something brilliant by starting off the commercial like it was old timey Western, until the camera revealed that the wooden bars of a jail was a kitchen chair and the cowboy in "prison" was a little rambunctious kid playing cowboy. I changed it into a commercial. What, are we going to shoot him in the dark in the closet? That's the way it works. There are no credits on commercials.
Something tells me that Don also came up with the rescuing-mother figure and "Footprints on a wet floor is no longer a hanging offense!" which is adorable and cathartic after seeing the child in "jail". (And then, fucked up when Don proposes to Megan because she was all, "Spilled milkshakes are no longer a hanging offense!"
Now, you could argue that even if Don was technically right and he had every right to accept the Clio and celebrity on Madison Avenue, that shouldn't have stopped him from giving Peggy some credit around the office or just with her on a one-to-one basis. And "you" would be right....to an extent. Weiner said something that he's been both Don and Peggy in this instance. He felt burned when David Chase got credit for some of his work on The Sopranos- but Weiner also had public disputes with some writers on his staff over credit/Emmys over Mad Men scripts.
However, it's funny- I think that personnel management has evolved enough in the 1970- 2000s have evolved enough that creative-industry bosses keep up a good image by giving a blanket thank you to everyone from their co-writers to the director to the actor to the crafts person to their personal trainer to the extent, that the second-in-command-writers actually don't feel thanked or they feel thanked on the same level as the guy who puts out the doughnuts (or in Hollywood, kale smoothies) for the writers' room. IMO, Don would have done that if Mad Men was set in 2010 Manhattan....and Peggy still wouldn't have felt thanked because she didn't get to accept the Clio (and then, take over Don's office because after all, she wrote the Glo-Coat ad).
Now to get into The Suitcase events, I've seen some people just argue straight that Peggy's original Joey Namath ad was terrible, citing:
Peggy: I don't know if you could tell, but he hated it.
Stan: I was hating it too while we were doing it, but not before. I'm not gonna lie.
Then, I've seen others say that Don was wrong to hate the ad because Joe Namath ended up becoming a huge star- "Broadway Joe" and this proves that Don is behind the times.
Disagree with both reads. IMO, Don was correct on Joe Namath. *I* think celebrity endorsements are lazy advertising, and not persuasive. I love Don objecting that he hasn't even played in a professional game yet. YES! People go bananas for athletes just because there's a new buzz about them for some vague ephemeral reason (like Joe's good looks), even though they'll be yesterday's news if they can't sustain a performance on the field.
Where IMO Don was wrong is that I liked the tackle football with the Tourister and Samsonite suitcases where the Tourister suitcase breaks and all of the clothes spill onto the field, while the Samsonite suitcase stayed intact. That's funny and directly addresses the benefit. However, I don't think Don was being a jerk or stupid to NOT find the commercial funny. Don accepts good work from his copywriters all the time. The problem was that Don was in a particularly bad, depressed mood because he was expecting that Anna would die any hour and he was afraid to make a phone call confirming that so nothing seemed remotely funny to him. That's....really legit. It's also why personal days were invented and he should have taken one.
Still, though, I do totally get just not finding a hokey commercial funny- but I WAS on Peggy's side here because he was way too mean in how he addressed her after the commercial. "Peggy, I'm glad that this is an environment where you feel free to fail" was unacceptable for just presenting a commercial proposal that he didn't care for.
But yeah, it's not like Don WANTED to reject good work and then, have to work all night in the office and miss seeing the Liston v. Ali fight that he was looking forward to in the morning and still wanted to hear on the radio as the night progressed. His dislike of Peggy's original proposal was genuine (even if rooted in his mood) and still, his prerogative as the boss.
However, then, I lurch back to Don's side because all of the guys knew that their other Samsonite proposals were terrible and they'd never get to enjoy their evening if they went to Don's office. They found it hilarious to watch Peggy go to Don's office to....announce that she's leaving. I'm at a loss on how Peggy didn't predict that Don would demand that she stay late, after Peggy presented proposals that EVEN SHE thought were subpar from her tone of voice. IMO, Peggy didn't really want to go to dinner with Mark (even before she found out that her family was there) because she wasn't that into him, exemplified by how she made out with Abe several eps before. And a part of her wanted the one-on-one time with Don to confront him about Glo-Coat.
However, at this point of the evening, you could even argue that type of conjecture. However relatively early in the night, Mark told Peggy that he invited her whole family and he was humiliated that she wasn't there yet, she promised to go the restaurant, and then she told Don FOR THE FIRST TIME that it was her birthday and she made solid plans with her boyfriend. Don told her go on ahead, however pissily and however determined to not feel guilty and have the last snarky word, WELL, ENJOY YOUR EVENING. By the way, you are 20-something years old. It's time to get over birthdays. Go ahead. I'll do it myself. I don't give a shit that it's not a GRACIOUS goodbye- it's a goodbye, giving Peggy, total license to leave without her job being in jeopardy at all.
At that point, it was clear- Peggy's choice to not go to her birthday party but instead stay in the office was all her own. She was wrong to blame Don for her break-up with Mark. Also this:
Don: So, now this is my fault?
Peggy: Well, it's not my fault you don't have a family, or friends, or anywhere else to go.
Is meaner than Don's "free to fail" lecture. (Also, inaccurate. Roger was begging for Don's company to watch the Liston/Ali fight on exclusive closed circuit TV. The lower-ranked guys would have enjoyed his company at the Palm for lobster and steak and then, the fight. Don had other desirable places to be- he just didn't want to be there.)
Then, Don gave Peggy leave again to go on her Olson-family dinner-meets-candle-light dinner-date. Go! Run to him! Like the movies.
Then, Peggy does land one somewhat on-point jab. I do have to be here because of some stupid idea from Danny who you had to hire because you stole his other stupid idea because you were drunk.
However, it's only on point because Don really was an irresponsible alcoholic trainwreck in how he had to hire dead-weight Danny. However, it doesn't make sense in terms of Peggy defending her work on Samsonite. She was eagerly claiming the football, Joe Namath idea as HER idea in all scenes- when she was performing it, later with Stan when she was griping that Don didn't like it, when she defended herself with Don.
And as I said above, I thought the writing really was good for the football commercial, even the endorsement at the end was weak. So yeah, it's Don's (and I supposed Roger's/Jane's) fault that the agency has to pay Danny even though he's not talented enough to be on salary. However, I think Peggy was full of shit on a number of levels that Danny was the reason why Don hadn't accepted any of the creative team's Samsonite ideas yet and why she was working late.
Then, Don/Peggy argue about credit on Glo-Coat which I've already described above. Actually, I think for most of the fight, they're both pretty on-point in sticking to the merits of their issues and yes, shouting but not getting cruel until Don steps over the line. And honestly, it is absolutely ridiculous to be two years into your career and counting your ideas. Everything to you is an opportunity. And you should be thanking me every morning when you wake up, along with Jesus, for giving you another day! It's the last part of the comment that really rankles.
Although, I bet that as a young copywriter, Don IMMEDIATELY started counting his ideas and that's part of why he got ahead. However, it's not necessarily the "counting" that's bothering Don- it's Peggy demanding credit for a commercial where she "sold" the skeleton outline in the context of her employment, demanded credit even though Don (IMO, rightfully) feels that he did the main work on the commercial and made it what it was, and started her conversation with a red-cape-challenge-to-a-bull that Don wasn't creatively capable of producing such good work on his own. HERE'S A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER. WHY DON'T YOU TURN THAT INTO GLO-COAT?
However, of course, it's terrible when Don demands total credit for every day of Peggy's employment when Peggy's totally proven why she deserves to a senior copywriter there, even if he took a chance by giving her first start.
5. Switching gears. I agree with the other partners' anger at Roger for tanking the Honda deal with racism. However, actually, I really think Roger JUST went after the Honda guys because of his racism and grudge over WWII. I do love Pete saying:
Pete: You don't think I know what you're doing? You're wrapping yourself in the flag so you can keep me from bringing in an account because you know that every chip I make, we become less dependent on Lucky Strike and therefore less dependent on you.
It's a great theory. It's totally the chess-master, petty-pride way that PETE thinks about life. However, I actually don't even think that Roger has the guile or ability to consider the future or diminished status at this point to even CONSIDER the idea. At this point in his life, I don't think Roger can imagine a scenario where he's not incredibly valued and comfortable in the agency. Yes, Roger's felt personally spurned or treated like less than he thinks of himself by Bert and Don in the past seasons. However, that's just spontaneous feelings of injustice and pissiness. It's not exactly Roger considering that he has to block future business, to maintain his current standing.
Plus, Roger's tantrum about Honda really was just RAW. It was completely hot-tempered with no evident calculation. Moreover, Roger was totally open to new business in S4 (even if he wasn't working for it) with every company BUT Honda.
1. I don't give a damn that the accountant, Frank Keller, and Henry Francis was on Don's side and Betty looked unreasonable. Don was an ass to get all hepped up that Betty was two months late from moving out the Ossining house from their agreed upon date and to start demanding a move-out date and rent.
Yes, I do think that Betty wasn't even looking for a house in the long period that she was supposed to (December of 1963 through Thanksgiving of 1964) partly out of spite and problematic issue with moving on from her first marriage instead of holding onto the grudge and hurt. However, Betty was straight-up busy and stressed out from all of the change- her father died, new baby, divorce from Don, remarriage to Herny- ALL IN A YEAR. It's a lot to add in relocating her and her three kids to an entirely new house. She just re-decorated the Ossining house in the summer of 1963, just to find that Don's entire identity was a lie in the fall of 1963. Just because spite dominated her affect in how she refused to move, and then how she did want to move, doesn't mean that the overwhelmingness of change didn't drive that spite. (IMO, Betty gained so much weight before S5 because of stress-eating more than Pauline's accusation that she got "too comfortable.")
I don't think the Ossining house was this huge financial burden for Don, especially since IMO, real estate taxes and insurance weren't nearly as relatively high back in the 1960s. Henry made a point of paying for stuff like clothes and food for the Draper children for the personal vanity feelings of Betty not owning Don anything. So (IMO, mainly out of Betty's and Henry's folly), Don got off easy with child-support, even if it's unclear exactly how it shook out, and he got away entirely with alimony since Betty just upped and remarried right away. So, a huge boo hoo that super-wealthy Don has to pay for a house where the majority of the residents are his children and his responsibility.
More to the point, given how Don behaved in the marriage, he doesn't have the authority to get on a moral high horse about agreed-upon move out dates. But it's pretty interesting how Frank Keller and Henry totally validate Don's petty wrongness in-story.
Frank Keller is just acting on his straight-forward fiduciary duty to give Don good financial advice. Fine. However, there's subtext on Mad Men that wealthy guys practically have a gang of lawyers, accountants, partners to validate any problematic behavior in their personal life, under the cover of "smart business practices." Frank doesn't know Betty or why their marriage broke up (even if it's reasonable assumption that it was because the husband was screwing around in that world). However, Frank operates from a position that unmet Betty has to be fucking Don over by not moving out by the agreed date or that he has to save Don from himself because it's such an ostensibly bad thing to give the bitch ex-wife access to the Draper children's trust funds, no matter if Sally actually had seven years to go until she became eighteen and Gene had *seventeen* years to go and giving Betty access would be prudent, even if Don didn't feel, at the time, that he may need to go on the lam from the government because of the desertion.
Meanwhile, I know exactly why Henry was all soberly,"I know you don't want to hear this, but he's right." He wanted to make his own house, suited to his tastes. (More old-fashioned mansion than modern McMansion). However, Henry jumped to a chance to be the high-handed arbiter of justice instead of just straight-forwardly saying that he'd like to move for him.
2. Within that, I don't think Henry was such an angel to Betty's demon-woman in S4. I think he was disingenuous in Public Relations- both in this instance and IMO, he didn't make nearly a strong enough stand to Pauline when she was all "Henry, I don't understand how you can stand living in that man's dirt" because he wanted his choices validated, but also some motherly sympathy at his situation's difficulty. So, he didn't work nearly hard enough to argue that Betty and her children are not....*dirt*. He was great in The Chrysanthenum and the Sword, in defending Sally from Betty and calming Betty down and suggesting Sally see a psychiatrist. And he may have been shouty and angry at Betty in Tomorrowland- but suddenly firing Carla without a reference, despite Carla's years of service to the family, demands quite a bit of anger to be thrown Betty's way (without even knowing the whole S4 Betty/Glenn/Sally dynamic which puts Betty in an even worse light).
However, I think he was an ass in The Summer Man. I don't get how Betty wouldn't be upset at seeing Don out on a date with a younger version of herself. That would upset people who were five years divorced, let alone one year divorced. Yes, Betty was difficult to deal with that evening. However, it's ridiculous that Henry couldn't just ride it out, either stay quiet through Betty's rantings if he's feeling too jealous and upset to engage or muster up the selflessness to say something comforting. However, I roll my eyes so hard at:
Betty: I hate him.
Henry: Hate's a strong word, Betty. I hate Nazis.
Henry can shut it with policing Betty saying, "I need a drink." You *need* a drink?! That's not something you get to say.
3. I'm mostly on Don's side in the Don v. Peggy conflicts this season- although not entirely. Of course, it's complicated with those two. I'm going to diagram their conflicts this season. (Maybe I'll discuss Tomorrowland in the addendum- although I don't think I'm that UO about it.)
For Public Relations, I'm sorry but Peggy (and Pete) done screwed up. If you have to call your boss for $280 in bribes and bail money ($2,149.18 adjusted for inflation) on Thanksgiving when the banks are closed, it's a fuck-up. Even if ham sales went up or "Our hams are worth fighting for" is some cute copy. Peggy's lucky that ahem Dick Whitman is a weirdo who keeps an ungodly amount cash lyin' around in case he needs to get gone. They were so hot-to-trot to get ham sales up, that they orchestrated a fight between two hot-tempered, unreliable, uncouth, under paid poor actresses and then, didn't excise enough powers of persuasion or caution to make sure that it wouldn't blow up in everyone's faces. If the actresses followed through on their threat and tried to tell a reporter that SCDP got them to have a fake fight over ham (that apparently ended up being a new sensation and made it into the papers and started a line for Sugarberry ham), that would be a disaster for SCDP and Sugarberry ham.
And I dunno, it's true that Peggy DID have an OK from a partner in Pete. But Pete's a junior partner and not in charge of creative. So, I think Don was absolutely right to be angry. He crossed over a line a little into *too harsh* by belaboring, "DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO THINK WE'RE IDIOTS, PEGGY?" but the rest of the time, I think his anger may have been not fun for Peggy to hear but a pretty correct, within-boundaries dissection of how much she really did fuck up.
However, the next day, Peggy basically sailed into the office with the free sample ham to inform Don that sales went up, like that was total absolution of her failure to control the situation and properly inform her boss that she was staging a very public fistfight over ham. I think Don and Peggy are stuck, especially once they moved to SCDP. Peggy wants to advance, but the only way she can do that in that company, is to take over Don's job since she was the second in command. Thus, Don is always the target that she'd like to destroy. Meanwhile, Don never wanted to fire or demote Peggy, no matter what, because she's talented and he loves her but he does frequently wants to bring her to heel because she's a competitor and because she tests her limits A LOT with him because she really does know that he'll never fire her and that infuriates him. So, he gets a high on yelling at her.
However, you can only yell at someone so many times before they're just sick of hearing your voice and regard you as The Asshole, especially if it's never going to backed up with real hard-power like a firing which is the only way to definitely show a employee that they're more trouble than they're worth. However, yes, it actually *is* hard for Don because like, *I* agree Peggy is talented enough that he shouldn't fire her even if she's unbelievably disrespectful and pulls some stupid heists like this. She's NOT more trouble than she's worth- but she is some amount of trouble.
So, even at this juncture, I don't even think Peggy heard the correct content of what Don was saying enough for it to stick as a lesson. Even though it should have because as I said earlier, Peggy and Pete done screwed up. Yes, Mark reported that she was "agonizing" over how the actresses were locked up for the escalating fight and threatening to tell the news that the fight was staged- but I think Peggy stopped agonizing once she got the bribe/bail money and a free sample of thank-you hams and then rewrote the whole situation in her head that she's awesomely brought up ham sales and Don was a jerk about it. LOL, I've done that before so it's not like I don't get it- but *I've* felt a special kind of guilt once I realized that I forgot/underrated my original mistake just because someone else cleaned up my mess but maybe yelled at me too much for my comfort.
Moreover, Peggy's parting shot of, "Well, nobody knows about the ham stunt, so our IMAGE remains pretty much where you left it" to mock Don for his non-charming interview was about as harsh as anything Don said in his reprimand. So at the end of the day, they were equal on harshness but Don was right on content and chain of command.
To double-score my point, I liked Don's Why I'm Quitting Tobacco letter way more than Peggy's ham-stunt. They're both genuinely clever shenanigans but Don was reacting to "desperate times call for desperate measures" and that was the solution he found for agency to not be seen as "stagnant or even decaying." Don took and absorbed the risks of the letter as the senior partner and Creative Director. And even though Don had no noble motives to weaken the tobacco companies and encourage anti-smoking efforts, The Letter DID jump-start enough of a conversation about cigarettes' health risks that the American Cancer Society thought it was one of the most substantive achievements of 1965. The ham-fight didn't do any of that.
However, I'd never dream of saying that Don should be above hearing his partners' harsh criticisms of his actions. They had every right to be upset and yell at him because he took a big risk without consulting them, even though he very well could have. So, Bert out and out called Don "cynical and craven" and saying that he "never though you had the stomach for a partnership" is harsher than anything Don said to Peggy in Public Relations. Bert was yelled at Don for something that *I* feel was a fairly brilliant manipulation of the media. Bert still had every right to do that because it's infuriating for someone to play high-wire hijinks with the reputation of the agency, without so much as consulting others, whether the person is a senior partner or an employee without an interest in the agency. And if Don wants to play those games, he should take the blow-back too.
I don't subscribe to the notion that Peggy is such a precious flower that she should be shielded from that kind of blow-back and Don should just hand over the bribe/bail money and give Peggy a gold star.
4. As for the Glo-Coat credit, again, I was mostly on Don's side. Yup, I agree THAT'S WHAT THE MONEY IS FOR. In exchange for a regular salary and a steady supply of business, Peggy agrees to give her ideas to the partners, namely her Creative Director boss and he gets the credit (or even the blame) for how the idea plays in the wider world. That's how creative agencies work, how writers' rooms work, how law firms work. This time, the Glo-Coat commercial was an award-winning success. If Don accepted Peggy's idea but it was a failure (there was a lawsuit stemming , the client later hated it), it would be Don's responsibility.
You know, I'd even feel that way even if the entire idea was Peggy's because Don bought the idea with her salary. However, it wasn't. Peggy provided the base outline- "No, it was something about a kid locked in a closet because his mother was making him wait for the floor to dry."
However, I think the Glo-Coat commercial would have been average if it was just literally that idea. However according to Peggy's own resentful statement ("Don put the whole cowboy thing on it") and Don's description of how he always wanted to make a commercial that was like a movie..."at least for the first ten seconds", Don made that outline idea into something brilliant by starting off the commercial like it was old timey Western, until the camera revealed that the wooden bars of a jail was a kitchen chair and the cowboy in "prison" was a little rambunctious kid playing cowboy. I changed it into a commercial. What, are we going to shoot him in the dark in the closet? That's the way it works. There are no credits on commercials.
Something tells me that Don also came up with the rescuing-mother figure and "Footprints on a wet floor is no longer a hanging offense!" which is adorable and cathartic after seeing the child in "jail". (And then, fucked up when Don proposes to Megan because she was all, "Spilled milkshakes are no longer a hanging offense!"
Now, you could argue that even if Don was technically right and he had every right to accept the Clio and celebrity on Madison Avenue, that shouldn't have stopped him from giving Peggy some credit around the office or just with her on a one-to-one basis. And "you" would be right....to an extent. Weiner said something that he's been both Don and Peggy in this instance. He felt burned when David Chase got credit for some of his work on The Sopranos- but Weiner also had public disputes with some writers on his staff over credit/Emmys over Mad Men scripts.
However, it's funny- I think that personnel management has evolved enough in the 1970- 2000s have evolved enough that creative-industry bosses keep up a good image by giving a blanket thank you to everyone from their co-writers to the director to the actor to the crafts person to their personal trainer to the extent, that the second-in-command-writers actually don't feel thanked or they feel thanked on the same level as the guy who puts out the doughnuts (or in Hollywood, kale smoothies) for the writers' room. IMO, Don would have done that if Mad Men was set in 2010 Manhattan....and Peggy still wouldn't have felt thanked because she didn't get to accept the Clio (and then, take over Don's office because after all, she wrote the Glo-Coat ad).
Now to get into The Suitcase events, I've seen some people just argue straight that Peggy's original Joey Namath ad was terrible, citing:
Peggy: I don't know if you could tell, but he hated it.
Stan: I was hating it too while we were doing it, but not before. I'm not gonna lie.
Then, I've seen others say that Don was wrong to hate the ad because Joe Namath ended up becoming a huge star- "Broadway Joe" and this proves that Don is behind the times.
Disagree with both reads. IMO, Don was correct on Joe Namath. *I* think celebrity endorsements are lazy advertising, and not persuasive. I love Don objecting that he hasn't even played in a professional game yet. YES! People go bananas for athletes just because there's a new buzz about them for some vague ephemeral reason (like Joe's good looks), even though they'll be yesterday's news if they can't sustain a performance on the field.
Where IMO Don was wrong is that I liked the tackle football with the Tourister and Samsonite suitcases where the Tourister suitcase breaks and all of the clothes spill onto the field, while the Samsonite suitcase stayed intact. That's funny and directly addresses the benefit. However, I don't think Don was being a jerk or stupid to NOT find the commercial funny. Don accepts good work from his copywriters all the time. The problem was that Don was in a particularly bad, depressed mood because he was expecting that Anna would die any hour and he was afraid to make a phone call confirming that so nothing seemed remotely funny to him. That's....really legit. It's also why personal days were invented and he should have taken one.
Still, though, I do totally get just not finding a hokey commercial funny- but I WAS on Peggy's side here because he was way too mean in how he addressed her after the commercial. "Peggy, I'm glad that this is an environment where you feel free to fail" was unacceptable for just presenting a commercial proposal that he didn't care for.
But yeah, it's not like Don WANTED to reject good work and then, have to work all night in the office and miss seeing the Liston v. Ali fight that he was looking forward to in the morning and still wanted to hear on the radio as the night progressed. His dislike of Peggy's original proposal was genuine (even if rooted in his mood) and still, his prerogative as the boss.
However, then, I lurch back to Don's side because all of the guys knew that their other Samsonite proposals were terrible and they'd never get to enjoy their evening if they went to Don's office. They found it hilarious to watch Peggy go to Don's office to....announce that she's leaving. I'm at a loss on how Peggy didn't predict that Don would demand that she stay late, after Peggy presented proposals that EVEN SHE thought were subpar from her tone of voice. IMO, Peggy didn't really want to go to dinner with Mark (even before she found out that her family was there) because she wasn't that into him, exemplified by how she made out with Abe several eps before. And a part of her wanted the one-on-one time with Don to confront him about Glo-Coat.
However, at this point of the evening, you could even argue that type of conjecture. However relatively early in the night, Mark told Peggy that he invited her whole family and he was humiliated that she wasn't there yet, she promised to go the restaurant, and then she told Don FOR THE FIRST TIME that it was her birthday and she made solid plans with her boyfriend. Don told her go on ahead, however pissily and however determined to not feel guilty and have the last snarky word, WELL, ENJOY YOUR EVENING. By the way, you are 20-something years old. It's time to get over birthdays. Go ahead. I'll do it myself. I don't give a shit that it's not a GRACIOUS goodbye- it's a goodbye, giving Peggy, total license to leave without her job being in jeopardy at all.
At that point, it was clear- Peggy's choice to not go to her birthday party but instead stay in the office was all her own. She was wrong to blame Don for her break-up with Mark. Also this:
Don: So, now this is my fault?
Peggy: Well, it's not my fault you don't have a family, or friends, or anywhere else to go.
Is meaner than Don's "free to fail" lecture. (Also, inaccurate. Roger was begging for Don's company to watch the Liston/Ali fight on exclusive closed circuit TV. The lower-ranked guys would have enjoyed his company at the Palm for lobster and steak and then, the fight. Don had other desirable places to be- he just didn't want to be there.)
Then, Don gave Peggy leave again to go on her Olson-family dinner-meets-candle-light dinner-date. Go! Run to him! Like the movies.
Then, Peggy does land one somewhat on-point jab. I do have to be here because of some stupid idea from Danny who you had to hire because you stole his other stupid idea because you were drunk.
However, it's only on point because Don really was an irresponsible alcoholic trainwreck in how he had to hire dead-weight Danny. However, it doesn't make sense in terms of Peggy defending her work on Samsonite. She was eagerly claiming the football, Joe Namath idea as HER idea in all scenes- when she was performing it, later with Stan when she was griping that Don didn't like it, when she defended herself with Don.
And as I said above, I thought the writing really was good for the football commercial, even the endorsement at the end was weak. So yeah, it's Don's (and I supposed Roger's/Jane's) fault that the agency has to pay Danny even though he's not talented enough to be on salary. However, I think Peggy was full of shit on a number of levels that Danny was the reason why Don hadn't accepted any of the creative team's Samsonite ideas yet and why she was working late.
Then, Don/Peggy argue about credit on Glo-Coat which I've already described above. Actually, I think for most of the fight, they're both pretty on-point in sticking to the merits of their issues and yes, shouting but not getting cruel until Don steps over the line. And honestly, it is absolutely ridiculous to be two years into your career and counting your ideas. Everything to you is an opportunity. And you should be thanking me every morning when you wake up, along with Jesus, for giving you another day! It's the last part of the comment that really rankles.
Although, I bet that as a young copywriter, Don IMMEDIATELY started counting his ideas and that's part of why he got ahead. However, it's not necessarily the "counting" that's bothering Don- it's Peggy demanding credit for a commercial where she "sold" the skeleton outline in the context of her employment, demanded credit even though Don (IMO, rightfully) feels that he did the main work on the commercial and made it what it was, and started her conversation with a red-cape-challenge-to-a-bull that Don wasn't creatively capable of producing such good work on his own. HERE'S A BLANK PIECE OF PAPER. WHY DON'T YOU TURN THAT INTO GLO-COAT?
However, of course, it's terrible when Don demands total credit for every day of Peggy's employment when Peggy's totally proven why she deserves to a senior copywriter there, even if he took a chance by giving her first start.
5. Switching gears. I agree with the other partners' anger at Roger for tanking the Honda deal with racism. However, actually, I really think Roger JUST went after the Honda guys because of his racism and grudge over WWII. I do love Pete saying:
Pete: You don't think I know what you're doing? You're wrapping yourself in the flag so you can keep me from bringing in an account because you know that every chip I make, we become less dependent on Lucky Strike and therefore less dependent on you.
It's a great theory. It's totally the chess-master, petty-pride way that PETE thinks about life. However, I actually don't even think that Roger has the guile or ability to consider the future or diminished status at this point to even CONSIDER the idea. At this point in his life, I don't think Roger can imagine a scenario where he's not incredibly valued and comfortable in the agency. Yes, Roger's felt personally spurned or treated like less than he thinks of himself by Bert and Don in the past seasons. However, that's just spontaneous feelings of injustice and pissiness. It's not exactly Roger considering that he has to block future business, to maintain his current standing.
Plus, Roger's tantrum about Honda really was just RAW. It was completely hot-tempered with no evident calculation. Moreover, Roger was totally open to new business in S4 (even if he wasn't working for it) with every company BUT Honda.