In Mad Men @ The Movies we talk about the show's movie references. Mad Men happens to love the movies and we happen to love Mad Men.
Megan Draper: My father won't care if he finds out you read James Bond.
Don Draper: You know what? It's a good book. You should read it.
Eyebrows were raised recently when it was announced that Jessica Paré would be submitting herself in the lead actress category at the Emmys for this season of Mad Men. Over the show's interminably long hiatus she graduated from guest star to... well, the new Mrs. Don Draper fits the "Lead" description in every way. Not only does Megan gets key storylines in every episode but her energy, impulsiveness, and partial foreignness is something like a youthquake for the show, especially since all the other characters are aging quicker than they'd like to.
In "At the Codfish Ball" and "Lady Lazarus" Megan's decisions continue to cause aftershocks with Don, Peggy, Roger and more who all seem to interpret Megan's decisions through their own narcissistic lens. Her parents visit, she saves a major account (Heinz Baked Beans) proving her natural aptitude at advertising but instead of celebrating she announces her resignation. She secretly still wants to be an actress and has been attending auditions on the sly.
Movie grammar and a pinch of Hitchcock after the jump...
Meanwhile... Peggy's relationship turns serious with a decision to move in with Abe, the boyfriend she's constantly neglecting (see previous post). Pete starts a bizarrely obsessive affair with a clearly neurotic housewife (Rory Gilmore herself), and Don Draper is mystified by current Beatles inspired sounds "when did music become so important?"
In an early scene in At the Codfish Ball (also a Shirley Temple number in 1936's Captain January) Don is shown reading the book "The Fixer" which was adapted into a film two years later winning an Oscar nomination for Alan Bates as an unjustly imprisoned initially apolitical Jew in Tsarist Russia. The visual cue at first seems random but given that Megan's father's communist politics are the subject of tension /discussion and given that Abe's Jewishness is a thorn in Peggy's mother's side, it can't be accidental.
While Megan is pitching her Heinz Baked Beans idea to Don Draper she discusses a mother serving her daughter baked beans in different time periods, all to be played by the same actors using "those dissolves you see in the movies". Movie grammar is important to Mad Men and usually telling. In a pitch scene for a new client, Michael Ginsberg promises the commercial will be shot-for-shot like A Hard Day's Night (1964), though the ending sequence with characters staring out from the screen will be just like in The Birds (1965).
Michael's pitch: A Hard Day's Night with a Hitchcock detour
Even shot-for-shot you can't replace one thing with another -- the ad men offer up plentiful Beatles sound-alikes -- but identity is crucial and people are not interchangeable. Haven't Joan and Peggy and we Mad Men fans long since learned that Megan is not Betty 2 as we first believed. When Megan quits the firm, Peggy has to step in for her to do a loving couple banter pitch with Don for Cool-Whip and it goes horribly comically wrong in one of "Lady Lazarus" best scenes. Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss have crazy good chemistry as actors but Don & Peggy are no Don & Megan when it comes to romantic chemistry.
Alexis Bledel is a dangerous liaisonIt's also worth noting that Pete's new fling Beth Dawes (Alexis Bledel) looks suspiciously like his wife Trudy; you could easily dissolve from one to the other. She's just as put together on the outside, a perfect brunette housewife exterior, but on the inside she's nothing like Trudy and quite possibly crazier than Pete. After one night of fucking, he apparently can't live without her.
Glenn: How's the city?
Sally: Dirty.
P.S. Another episode of Mad Men airs tonight. We'll try to be quicker about these points as we enter the final stretch of Season Five.
Other Cultural References: Bluto (from Popeye), Francis the Talking Mule who starred in several 1950s comedy feature films, and The Zombies, The Spoonfuls, Herman's Hermits, and The Beatles.