Mad Men: "Souvenir" -- HuffPost Review
The eighth episode of this Mad Men season is really the Betty Draper show, We learn some key things here. Not the least of which is that Don Draper is not as suave as we, and he, think. And that it is Betty who may have made the mistake in marrying Don, and not the other way around, as is usually supposed.
We also learn that the episode's title, thankfully, does not refer to Pete Campbell getting the clap.
As always with these reviews, spoilers abound, so you have been warned.
In case you missed it, here's a quick recap of Episode 7.
This episode was a big showcase for January Jones, a stunning beauty who is also a very good actress. It's also one of the (seemingly) simpler episodes of Mad Men, in large part because a number of the major characters made no appearance in it.
Let's go to Ken Cosgrove for that update. "Cooper's in Montana, Sterling's in Jane, and Draper's on vacation." Notice that there's no mention of Lane Pryce, the ongoing British overseer from Putnam, Powell, and Loeb, who's nowhere to be seen. Or Duck Phillips, Peggy Olsen's recent seducer, also MIA. Or of Peggy herself, who's always in these episodes. But not this one, as it happens.
Jane, of course, is a person and not a place. To be specific, she's Don's former neo-Mod secretary, who married Sterling Cooper partner Roger Sterling, thus triggering the sale of the firm to London's PPL in order to finance Roger's divorce. (Incidentally, we're not seeing mych of Jane, played by Peyton List, this season because the actress is a regular in the new ABC series Flash Forward.) And Don is not on vacation, he's been touring the hotel properties of his surprise pal "Connie" Hilton, including such godawful places, in Paul Kinsey's point of view, as "Dallas and Denver." But he is about to go somewhere even that snobby liberal would like.
Ken is weighing in with the guys gathered around Pete Campbell's office. It's August 1963, and August in New York can be quite godawful. But dyed-in-the-wool Manhattanite Pete Campbell is hanging in there in the Big Apple, even though his pert wife Trudy is off vacationing with her rich parents. Nothing good can come of this, as we will see.
"Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency" was a most consequential episode.
But let's get back to Betty Draper, as this is really her show.
Betty has been, not to put too fine a point on it, a drag in Mad Men for some time. For me, she's largely gone from being a sympathetic victim sort of figure -- stuck in the suburbs, married to an inattentive, thoroughly dishonest, constantly cheating husband (that would be our protagonist, Mr. Don Draper) -- to a mopey bore. She can't even be nice to her kids.
Now we're seeing why.
It's been clear from the beginning that Betty is bright, if child-like. Now we're seeing she's much more than that. Far from being a rather blank mannequin, she's better educated and in some ways more sophisticated than Don. She's a graduate of Bryn Mawr, one of the finest liberal arts colleges in America, and is something of an internationalist. No wonder she's unhappy making casseroles and separating brawling kids.
Realizing that her third child, much as she dotes on the baby she's named after her late father, won't solve the problem of her life, she becomes involved in politics. Specifically, she uses the power of her beauty to get Governor Nelson Rockefeller's senior advisor Henry Francis, whom we first met caressing her pregnant belly at the Sterlings' preposterous "Derby Day" party on Long Island, to intervene on behalf of her Junior League group to block the construction of an unsightly (to their bourgeois eyes) water tower. Betty has become an early conservationist/environmentalist.
A quick recap of Episode 5. The new baby, much as she dotes on him, will not solve Betty's existential crisis.
Henry, not surprisingly, shows up in person at the local government meeting to intervene in Rockefeller's name on behalf of Betty's group. Distributing a letter from the governor, he succeeds in having the project stalled in favor of more study.
Later, with Betty's knowing friend Francine having driven off with a knowing look, he presses his advantage with Betty and wins a snogging session with her. Which she accedes to. Well, actually, she doesn't merely accede, she participates enthusiastically. And then that's it, and she drives off. Betty is a WASP princess, however, and were this later in the '60s, and this show not on basic cable, she would likely have had sex with Henry in the back seat of her Lincoln Continental. Which happens to be her late father's car, which she drove to the meeting for, as she puts it, luck. But it's actually a way of identifying with the powerful man in her life who always adored her.
Note to Don.
Which brings us to Don, who is tired from running around checking out hotels in Connie's empire. He's finding that it's not always fun being friends with the great, especially when you work for them.
The essential milieu of Mad Men is not all that admirable.
Now Don's been summoned to Rome. Which I don't think is all that much greater than Denver, but that's another matter. Betty, so gleeful after her excursion into politics and snog with Henry that she does a little "Twist" for Don, finally decides she'd like to go, too, which Don is actually quite happy about.
When they arrive in the lobby of Hilton's hotel in Rome -- which for once is not LA's Biltmore Hotel as a stand-in, looking more like the LA Music Center -- it quickly becomes apparent that Betty is quite fluent in Italian. After surprising Connie by answering their room phone in Italian, Betty naps and is then off to the hairdressers. It's Betty, not Don, who is conversant in La Dolce Vita.
When next we see her, the Westchester County housewife looks like an Italian film goddess. Gone is the suburban Grace Kelly; this is a Virna Lisi -- stacked blonde hairdo (with an obvious fall added for effect), bright flesh-colored make-up and lipstick, and a sexy black frock.
A quick recap of Episode 4.
She's waiting by the pool for Don. Not surprisingly, two Italian gallants try to pick her up. After complimenting her on her Italian and lighting her cigarette, one says that if he were the cigarette in her mouth, he would die happy.
After noting, in Italian, that he is no gentleman, Betty finds that another admirer has pulled to the table on the other side of hers. It's Don, of course, who proceeds to play the pick-up game with her while her Italian admirers denounce him -- in Italian -- as "old" and "ugly."
Truth be told, Don is looking quite '50s here. Kind of like Cary Grant after a hard day's night.
But his charm wins out and the Italians depart just before Connie Hilton arrives. His eyes don't quite pop out of their sockets at the realization that Betty is Don's wife, but it's a close call and he's even more admiring of Don in that way that men are with regard to beautiful consorts.
Peggy Olsen, already a Bob Dylan fan, balances her extreme career girl persona with the additional discovery of marijuana in this Episode 3 recap.
After their dinner with Hilton, which evidently goes smashingly well, with Betty telling Don that Connie "obviously adores" him, and we can assume that Hilton was even more wowed by Betty's intelligence and sophistication, the now happy couple repairs to their hotel room for a few bouts of lovemaking.
But Rome comes to an end all too soon, and soon enough, Betty is back in Scarsdale, er, Ossining, to referee her kids. Which she is actually better at, even though Carla, their longtime black housekeeper who is back to look after things in her absence, tells her that Sally beat up her brother after he caught her kissing a neighbor boy in the bathtub. (They weren't taking a bath.)
Betty has a warm and motherly chat with Sally about the etiquette and meaning of kissing, a chat which may not be as freighted as the writers seem to suggest.
Meanwhile, Sally's not the only one back home who's been engaged in some unwise kissing.
The extended Draper family, happy for a moment or four in this Episode 2 recap.
By chance, an on the loose Pete Campbell, with wife Trudy off capsizing sailboats with her parents, after alternately boozing it up and eating cereal like a kid, literally bumps into an attractive young German woman trying to stuff a fancy dress down their building's garbage chute. She's the au pair of a neighbor, and she's gotten a bad stain on her client's dress, which she should not have been wearing in the first place. Pete, correctly sizing up the situation, tells her that dumping the dress will only tell her employers that she stole it, and gallantly offers to solve the problem for her.
He takes the dress to Bonwit Teller -- now defunct, then equivalent to Saks Fifth Avenue -- and attempts to get it replaced.
Amusingly, and this still actually happens some today in womens' dress departments, he is taken for a guy looking for the men's room. Once that's cleared up, Pete tries his trademark bullshit technique of getting it replaced. Getting nowhere, he demands to talk to the manager in charge of "the republic of dresses."
This turns out to be ... one Joan Holloway. Yikes. The new Mrs. Harris obviously hasn't told her former colleagues that her dreamboat doctor isn't the head poobah she'd thought. In fact, embarrassed, she tells Pete that he's looking into another field other than surgery. Asked what that might be, she replies, pulling this from her ass, "Psychiatry."
Obviously, he has no idea what he's going to do, nor does she.
In the season opener, recapped here, Don Draper discovers -- shock of shocks -- that Sterling Cooper art director Sal Romano is gay.
Nevertheless, she sees through Pete's subterfuge that he's returning the dress for Trudy, noting that she hadn't seemed to be a size 10. Still, since she is Joan, she solves Pete's problem expeditiously and at no cost, with secrets safe. Yet looks quite defeated after he leaves, knowing that her own secret is now about to be out.
Pete, of course, having done the decent thing, can't play the nice guy who charms the au pair. After an initial polite rebuff, in which the girl lets on that she has a boyfriend, and more than a few drinks, Pete shows up to claim his reward for being a nice guy. Which he gets. It's creepy, but it doesn't look like a rape. More like an immigrant girl not wanting to make waves.
But she does end up making waves. In an excellent scene, Pete's neighbor comes to by to discuss the matter. Cutting through Pete's lame attempts to deflect, he tells him the girl is very upset and he should stay away from her as she's a nice girl and good nannies are hard to come by. "Man, at least look outside the building!" he exclaims in some amazement about Pete's stupidity.
When Trudy at last returns from her parents', Pete actually acts quite guilty. (And not because he's caught a venereal disease, which is what I thought at first.) He doesn't tell her why, and she doesn't figure it out, but these two crazy kids vow to spend vacations together from now on.
This happy ending, as it were, is not replicated in Chez Draper.
Betty, after being a good mom for a change, finds the glow of Rome fading. She learns that those nefarious local officials might be trying to slip the water tower project past even with the opposition from Governor Rockefeller. And casting a baleful glance at the awful fainting couch she bought for the living room, she wonders if she's through with Henry Francis. (I think not.)
All of which is to be expected. Betty is the sort of person who is never happy for long, and is constantly questioning her good fortune even as she enjoys it.
What's not to be expected is Don's romantic incompetence. Sensing that Betty is a bit down in the dumps after their Roman holiday, he presents her with a present. He'd seen it in the hotel gift shop but hadn't had a chance to pick it up before they left, so he had Connie ship it to them, he tells her.
Well, my friend, after that build-up, this had better be good.
And it's decidedly not. It's not a pair of earrings, it's not a necklace. It's a ... charm. You know, for her charm bracelet.
When it came on screen, I at first didn't know what it was, never having considered a charm to be much of a gift. When I realized what it was, I couldn't believe that Don would be so stupid.
Betty, naturally, is underwowed. She says, sourly, that she'll put it on her charm bracelet so she can look at it "when I talk about the time we went to Rome."
This episode flips the perception of their relationship. The reality is that Betty is suited to be the partner of a much more powerful, or at least more sophisticated, man than Don. And his gift shows that he doesn't realize this.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
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Bill, I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that Pete got the clap? I agree... that would account for his strangely contrite behavior when his wife came home. But was it just his behavior that led you to believe it or was it something else (something I apparently missed)?
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As I wrote at the top, he did NOT get the clap.
Smaller notes:
1) Implictly blackmailing a teenager into sex is date rape at the very least. Please don't get all Whoopi Goldberg on us with rape-rape equivocations, etc. The fact that the young woman revealed all to her employers (despite being too worried previously to tell them about a dress) additionally suggests that she did not consider it consensual. But the WASPs are apparently glad to hush it up, as long as Pete stays out of the building in the future. Pete adds insult to crime by implicity blaming his wife, implying that if she doesn't go away without him, it will never happen again. (And why the guilt, anyway? He seemed quite chuffed when he shagged the model he met in the elevator when already a married man. Perhaps he was worried about her hearing about it in the building.) Decidedly, I can no longer hope for any rehabiliitation for Peter; his character is firmly fixed as a creep.
2) In the first season, Betty pulls out a bunch of dresses that an (Italian?) designer made for her when she was a model. I'm guessing the Italian therefore comes from her modelling days.
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Sorry for stirring the PC police. However, I need a little bit more to call Pete a rapist.
What he did was clearly wrong, as I wrote.
3) I join those who don't consider the Coliseum charm an insult in and of itself. It actually shows a remarkable level of thoughtfulness and effort for the kind of husband Don is. (Usually secretaries were in charge of this kind of thing.) The point is that another small memory -- which she finds is common in that even dowdy Francine gets weekends away -- in a sea of domestic doldrums is not enough. (Betty swanning around suburbia in her brand new Italian gown is the image of disappointed expectations of glamor.) I think it's also meant to underline that it is not only Don's philandering that makes the marriage unstable. Even without that, even when the husband is attentive, it's not enough for a woman like Betty.
I found this the most depressing episode to date. Probably because there was nary an office scene to leaven the barrage of domestic letdowns.
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It was a foolish, bad gift.
We know this because Betty HATES it ...
Betty is a feminist because she is dissatisfied with her lot in life, despite being brought up to it and having everything she thought she wanted (besides Don's unswerving adoration). The fact that she is not self-aware or militant, doesn't change the fact of her yearnings which classic female roles do not satisfy.
Betty is interesting because she is suffering under a triple-whammy of repression: society's expectations and limitations on women in that era; her WASP-y class-imposed emotional retentiveness and false dignity; and her own mother's crazy notions of female behavior (weight, courting, etc.) which we see reflected in Betty's own nutty and age-inappropriate talks with Sally. ("Every subsequent kiss is a shadow of that first one." - WTF?! The first kiss apparently representing the all-important conquest. And how is that helpful to a child?)
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Betty is not a feminist.
She is an unhappy woman, who would likely find greater happiness married to a richer and more powerful man who understands and can cater to her sophistication.
When Betty started speaking fluent Italian I thought immediately of the time that John and Jackie Kennedy went to Paris and she spoke French charmed everyone.
This episode was so much about style and appearance, and the dialogue suffered.
I am not sure if it is intentional, or just bad writing, but the affectation and tone of Pete Campbell as he spoke to the au pair, and later his wife, was stilted, wooden, and barely realistic. I just did not buy the reaction of his wife to Pete's cheating. I know they keep a lot buried underneath their proper facades, but his emotional openness and teary eyes would have brought out more his wife, not just hand holding.
His meeting with Joan, in Bonwit Teller, again was full of beautiful, elegant, early 1960's urbanity and formality, but their dialogue sounded so false and affected.
The settings, costumes and design were enchanting and maybe this element of the show is what mattered to Mr. Weiner this week.
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I just noticed that a comment I replied to has disappeared ...
That kinda, you know, SUCKS!!!!!!
Another excellent recap. ITA the episode should and could have been entitled "All about Betty." And boy do we realize the degree to which she is trapped in her role of perfect "mother" and "wife." I was taken aback when she started to speak fluent Italian. Yup, as you say that would be Bryn Mawr. We also get an inkling of who Betty might have been had she not been chiseled by her upbringing, by her overbearing father and equally bullying mother. The result of their tutelage an exquisite porcelain doll; a readymade prop (maybe a little too Limoge as you suggest) in the theater of Don Draper.
Speaking of theater. We see how much Betty and Don can slip into being someone else - Cary Grant, Verna Lisi which instantly resuscitates their physical attraction to one another. The best scene - Betty, Sally and the lipstick. You can see Sally "absorbing" the cues from Mommy - the gaze, the mask of femininity and powerlessness (boys kiss you!) And Sally already replaying the scenes of marriage by kissing, arguing, and the hitting.
This all to say that Betty wants to be somewhere else and someone else; little does she know that Dan has beat her to the mark!
And Pete - how could he get any more vile...
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Thanks.
And re Pete, as it were, I was literally talking to the screen, saying, "Man, you are going to screw this up again. You can't just be this girl's hero, you have to take advantage..." And so he did.
As someone who remembers 1963, a few comments:
Charm bracelets were extremely popular in the late '50s and early '60s. Betty may have expected more, but Don wasn't all that incompetent.
I thought Trudy understood what lay behind Pete's mood, although I don't think she suspected the au pair with whom they uncomfortably shared the elevator. Summer encounters between married men whose wives were away and younger single women were a Manhattan cliche (see "The Seven Year Itch").
All of the wives in "Mad Men" seem to be exact fits for the description supplied by Betty Friedan, whose book, "The Feminine Mystique" had been published in February 1963. They suffer from "a nameless, aching dissatisfaction" "the problem that has no name".
The drunken Pete going back to the au pair's apartment was a reprise of his drunken appearance at Peggy's door the night before his wedding. It's a seduction technique I never thought of, but it seems to work for him.
Finally, when the Drapers returned to their room after dinner with Connie, I was reminded of the scene in "Two for the Road" (Stanley Donan, 1967), set in the summer of 1963(?), where Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) and Mark (Albert Finney) return to their room after a party with Mark's new client, Maurice (Claude Dauphin). Joanna wearily exclaims, "Quelle gala!"
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Don, and I like Don, was an idiot to give Betty a "charm" for her charm bracelet.
If I were Don, it would occur to me that my pal Connie Hilton could make a move on Betty. Giving her a meaningless charm is a total devaluation of her. What did that cost him? 10 bucks?
Idiotic of him.
He is supposed to be a power player, not a middle class yutz.
I thought the charm was a charming gift--it was a mini-Colosseum...a Souvenir.
Thus, the title of the episode. A keepsake, a memento, a remembrance of their trip. You can't put a price tag on that. Judging by how she looked on their night on the town, she's not hurting for expensive jewels and couture, and Colosseum earrings would have been a bit tacky, so he gave her a charm to add to her bracelet. I thought it was lovely.
What was wrong is that they didn't bring souvenirs for the kids. Let's hope they did.
Betty's own words in response to the charm indicate that it was not the price tag or the Connie connection that offended her.
It was that the weekend away and the charm representing it was not enough to make up for how dreary she found most of her life. If anything, the trip (and the charm) only throw her disappointing day-to-day into starker relief. Note the genius move of her brushing domestic dust off her new Italian dress, probably meant to be worn poolside in Capri, and not in a plaid kitchen in Ossining.
While I really appreciate your weekly recaps Will, I think that you are wrong in your interpretation of the charm Don gives to Betts. My grandmother still has the charm bracelet she has accumulated over a lifetime of travel and events. As she explained it to me charm bracelets were a both a common and classy way to commemorate travels, children, anniversaries, etc. The charms themselves were often of high quality, made of fine metals and stones and were understood to represent a "higher class of people", i.e. middling wealthy suburbanites like the Drapers, and my grams. I think Don's choice was a spot on 'souvenir' of the Roman weekend and I think Betty's reaction was a spot on Betty-like response to descending back into her own domestic reality: her disappointment with the triviality she calls a life flashed across her face when she opened the charm box. Every time she looks down at her wrist Betty Draper will remember that for a few short days she got to be Virna Lisi, but on every other day she's just Betts.
And I think it's incorrect to claim that Betty's work for the Jr. League makes her "an early conservationist/environmentalist." She's no Rachel Carson, and again she has this in common with my grams, she's a N.I.M.B.Y. Take a look in any suburb today, they're still around.
You seem unaware of the popularity of charm bracelets among all classes at the time. I remember attending a summer Sunday afternoon party sometime in the early '60s, where Ethel Kennedy was wearing one. Was Bobby Kennedy a power player?
As to the cost, the coliseum charm might very well have been solid platinum or white gold. Of course back then gold was still $35 a troy ounce.
And was the high-fashion ensemble Betty wore to dinner in Rome something she brought with her? I doubt it. My guess is she did some shopping in Rome.
You seem unaware of the popularity of charm bracelets among all classes at the time. I remember being at a Sunday afternoon party sometime in the early '60s, where Ethel Kennedy was wearing one. Bobby Kennedy was certainly a power player.
The coliseum charm may very well have been made of platinum or white gold. Of course, in those days gold sold for $35 a troy ounce. Later in the '60s, charm bracelets were appropriated by teenagers and quality pieces became hard to find.
I doubt Betty brought the high-fashion evening ensemble she wore so well with her from home. I believe she did some upscale shopping in Rome, in addition to her visit to the beauty salon.
Last night's episode totally belonged to January Jones. Va-va-va-voom! In Rome, she was almost too hot for Don. Then, back in NY, the ice queen reemerged.
It seems likely that she'll allow herself to be pursued by Rocky's right-hand-man (although I didn't especially enjoy watching them kiss.) She is desperately craving power and excitement.
Hey, Bill, don't you know somebody an awful lot like Betty Draper?... :)
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Well, yes, perhaps ...
Mr. Bradley, you are correct that this episode is largely about Betty. But I think you have avoided mentioning the larger implications. Betty is on the leading edge of a feminist revolution that's about to gain significant traction with the publication of "The Feminine Mystique." Betty is clearly unhappy with her lot in life, exclaiming at one point, her hatred of her friends, her house, and the town in which she lives. She is clearly of above-average intelligence and capable of succeeding in a world far beyond her current, limiting circumstances.
Her plight is so clearly defined in this episode, it occurs to me that it answers the nagging question as to why they live in Ossining. Turns out, it's the perfect metaphor for her imprisoned existence. She's like the proverbial "bird in a gilded cage." But this bird will fly.
Betty Draper is a feminist??!!
Really?
HAhahahahaha.
I see Peggy or Joan as more of a feminist in the making.
I love the Season Opener.
But I don't get how no one got that Sal is gay!!
>In the season opener, recapped here, Don Draper discovers -- shock of shocks -- that Sterling Cooper art director Sal Romano is gay.
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Yes, hard to miss.
The Draper Family enchanted by the May Pole! Too funny a recap for Ep 2...
Ep3! Peggy and pot! Still kinda incongruous, know what I mean?!
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Sometimes the most uptight people embraced the drug culture.
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