Mad Men: "The Gypsy and the Hobo" -- HuffPost Review
"The Gypsy and the Hobo" is a great episode of Mad Men. For those who've been thinking that the pace of the show was more than a bit slow earlier in the season, that's certainly not the case now.
As always with these reviews, there be spoilers ahead, so you've been warned.
This is a most consequential episode which contains the big confrontation we've been waiting for from the beginning.
It also contains some very fine acting. I'd say it's time to polish up an Emmy for Jon Hamm. And perhaps for January Jones.
Don Draper was on top of the world in Episode 10.
Incidentally, this review was delayed a bit for two reasons. First, because my Chinatown/Polanski piece was still featured on Huffington Post. Second, because a technological glitch deleted the 3000-plus word piece I was just about to post as I finished polished it up, fixing typos. Apparently I hit the wrong combination of keys.
But I think we can get by with a review in lieu of a long moment-to-moment recap, which was on this occasion even more so than most as I took detailed notes on the episode, which I hadn't done before, to have the precise tick-tock in place.
The A story is Don and Betty Draper, with Betty confronting Don about her knowledge of the contents of his long-locked drawer.
The principal B story concerns Roger Sterling meeting a rich, beautiful old girlfriend who wants to bring the family dog food business (Soylent Green is ... horses!) back to Sterling Coo, and hook up anew with Roger. Annabelle's theory is that Roger has married "a teenager" and she's sure she can snag him by likening their pre-World War II Parisian romance -- it seems that Roger tried to live the Hemingway myth, boxing and partying his way along the boulevards -- to Casablanca.
Don Draper's amigo and uber-client, Connie Hilton, was disappointed in Episode 9 when surrogate son Don didn't give him the Moon. But he's still a big fan, hosting the 40th anniversary party for Sterling Cooper at the Waldorf Astoria.
The other B story is Joan and Greg. Or Dr. Blockhead, as I've come to think of him. He's trying to be a shrink because he can't be a surgeon, at least, not in New York. Violence enters their relationship again, though not in the way that fans expected.
Of corse, it may be, speaking of relationships, that the principal B story is that of Don and Sally's beloved former teacher, Miss Suzanne Farrell. They've become very cozy, especially with Betty taking the kids -- no, she didn't go to California to confront Anna Draper -- to her late dad's house. Ostensibly to work out its disposition with ever whiny brother William and the family lawyer. But also to get the lawyer's advice on what to do about what she's discovered about Don. Or, perhaps more accurately, Dick Whitman.
He tells her to stay in the marriage, because New York state law favors the hsband in divorce. Roger's view of New York divorce law, of course, is exactly the opposite.
Does she take the lawyer's advice? In a way.
Betty decides to confront Don. Catching him ust as he's coming by to pick up a few things for his week-long getaway with Suzanne. Not knowing that Betty and the kids have returned early, Don leaves Suzanne, with her bag packed, outside in his Cadillac while he pops into the house. Only to find the kids and ... a notably displeased Betty.
Here's a quick recap of Episode 8.
I was anxious throughout, thinking that Suzanne would, after a time, get out of Don's car and go in and see what happened to him. Had he fallen down the stairs?
Instead, she waits, slumped in the front seat, while Don and Betty's scene plays out.
And what a scene it is. It's a tour de force for both actors. Don tries to bluff his way through -- at first, amusingly, saying he has to go back to the Caddy to get his hat! (and, you know, drop Suzanne back at her flat) -- but Betty's having none of it.
She bores right in through his defenses, even as he looms over her whining about his privacy. She sees that he's caught and sees that he knows he's caught as soon as he realizes that she has seen the contents of his long-locked drawer. He's certainly shaken, so shaken he has trouble walking and can't even fix his own drink, which Betty suggested and ends up making for him. Perhaps, as she suggests, he even wanted to be caught. The burden of such a massive set of fundamental deceptions has weighed him down since the show began.
A quick recap of Episode 7.
And so, with her prodding, as is his way he goes through his sad set of photos and tells the story of Dick Whitman. It's like a pitch at Sterling Cooper. Absent the pitch. Explaining the characters, rather pathetically noting of his step-mother's de facto husband that "he was nice to me." The only bit of grace in the tale.
When it comes to his brother -- "the little boy in all the pictures" as Betty calls him -- he at first says that Adam died, but then admits that he killed himself. Not because he wanted help from Don but because he wanted to be in Don's life. And Don couldn't risk it, not without risking "all this."
Don visibly deflates during this like a magnificent balloon in the Thanksgiving Day parade skewered by a lamp post. When he awakes the next morning, he's alone. After putting on his usual Don Draper costume -- it's Halloween morning but, unlike the kids, he's working -- he ventures downstairs and finds Betty and the kids. And all is, if not swell, fairly well.
Sally notices that her parents are, if rather tentative with each other, also interested in each other. Perhaps they're seeing behind the facades. Prompted by the kids, they make plans to go trick or treating.
"Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency" is a consequential episode.
Which leads us back to the title of this episode.
Sally goes as the gypsy, while little Bobby is the hobo. Now I'd thought, when I saw this episode title, that it referred to proto-hippie/itinerant teacher Suzanne as the gypsy and that rambling man Don Draper/Dick Whitman as the hobo. Perhaps in a way it does. Both directly, as above, and indirectly, in the sense that Sally caught the inspiration from her beloved former teacher and Bobby intuited his father's real background.
In any event, the sort of happy family is out in the neighborhood and rings a neighbor doorbell. It's answered by the frequently annoying Carlton. "I see a gypsy and a hobo," he says, grasping the kids' costumes. Very nice. Then he looks at Don and Betty. "And who are you supposed to be?"
Who, indeed? They'll have to figure that out as the '60s get rolling in earnest.
The credits roll with a song from Oliver! playing over them. That's the hit Broadway musical of 1963, based loosely on Dickens. "A tragedy with a happy ending," as Lane Pryce observed several weeks ago.
It's about a poor orphan who finds a family of a sort when he falls in with a pack of thieves.
The essential milieu of Mad Men is not all that admirable.
Speaking of which, the next two episodes -- last two of the season -- look to be heavily Sterling Cooper-centric.
We do have some good Sterling Coo action in this episode.
But before getting to that, let's talk about our Miss Farrell. Prior to the Big Reveal, it was clear that Don had fallen fairly hard for her. And that she had really fallen for him. They play house while Betty is away with the kids, with Suzanne cooking her favorite meal for an appreciative Don while noting that she can't share it with him in her favorite restaurant. Which leads to Don's brilliant idea of going away with her while Betty's away with the kids. If only he hadn't had to stop off at his house while heading out of town.
Here's a quick recap of Episode 5.
But he did, leaving her waiting in his car while Betty forced their showdown. This made me anxious throughout for Don. I've never bought the notion that Suzanne is a psycho stalker type. But it wold have been reasonable for her, after a time, to barge into the house looking for Don. She waits and waits and then finally gets out of the car. And walks away, slumping as she carries her bag, looking dejected. Perhaps she knew that Betty was there. We don't see that. We also don't see psycho behavior from her.
When Don finally wakes up after his big catharsis, he calls her from the office. She's very accommodating. She knows it's over, though Don leaves a crack in the window. Then she worries abot her job. Evidently Don is not her first married man. Their conversation is entirely reasonable, if quite sad.
A quick recap of Episode 4.
The conversation in the other misfiring affair, that of Roger and Annabelle, is far more tart. She is really quite insistent on hooking up with Roger again, though that's not what I meant by tart when I typed it. He agrees to dinner with her, at another of his snazzy bistros -- does he know any other kind? -- and over the bordeaux takes a stroll down memory lane with his old girlfriend.
It's a much fonder memory for Annabelle than for Roger. After she pushes it a bit far by telling him that he must have thought of her when he saw Casablanca, Roger points out that the heroine in that story left Bogie with the guy who was going to end World War II, not run her father's dog food business.
Here's a quick recap of Episode 3.
Annabelle tries a trump card as they part. "You were the one," she tells him. "You weren't," Roger replies.
It's so good to have Roger Sterling back. He's been moping and sniping, largely at Don -- who dislikes Roger because his marriage to Don's ex-secretary led to the sale of Sterling Coo and because Roger, unlike Don, does seem happy -- through most of this season.
Roger gets in on the action also by helping Joan. After Greg, or Dr. Blockhead as I've come to think of him, the thumb-fingered surgeon who wants to be a shrink, blows his psychiatry interview despite Joan's shrewd advice, he's breaks out his bottle of whine.
"Stop acting like you know everything. You don't know. You don't know what it's like to want something your whole life, and to plan for it and count on it and not get it."
Since she most definitely does, she bashes her very own Exhibit A over the head with a vase of flowers.
A quick recap of Episode 2.
She'd already figured out that she needs work other than selling dresses at Bonwit Teller, so she'd asked Roger for help landing a new job. When Joan, her pride in play, turns down his offer of a return to Sterling Coo, he agrees to help her find another good position, and sets about doing just that.
Roger had better hurry because Joan's one-time dreamboat hubster has come up with a new master plan.
Arriving home the next day with flowers for Joan, who's a bit abashed about bashing him over the head, Dr. Blockhead says he'll buy her a new vase and lots more cool stuff besides. Because he's solved their problems.
He's gone and joined the Army. And he can be a surgeon in the Army, too. (Remind me never to get shot in his theater of operations.) And he's going in as a captain. So Joan won't have to work at all and he's going to keep her in high style.
On an Army captain's salary? Do you have to take math to get through medical school?
Of course, he may have to go overseas for a few years. "To West Germany, or Vietnam, if that's still going on."
"Forget the soup tonight," he tells Joan, "We're going out to celebrate!" I don't think dyed-in-the-wool New York girl Joan ever saw herself as an Army wife.
Wait till Roger hears about this. It definitely tops anything from Annabelle, though perhaps not her family firm's little PR problem. Actually, it's a big PR problem.
It seems those folks out in Hollywood, as Bert Cooper points out, have made big trouble for the dog food business with a movie called The Misfits.
That was the last completed film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Gable had a heart attack a day after it wrapped. He died a week later. Monroe was a mess throughout the shoot. She was so into pills and booze they had to send her to rehab. After the wrap, she went to a sanitarium. She's a bundle of nerves in the movie, and her hysterical reaction when her character learns that Gable and Monty Clift and Eli Wallach are catching wild Nevada horses for their meat is shocking in its rawness. It's directed, incidentally, by John Huston, the indelible villain of Chinatown.
People hadn't realized that horses were killed for dog food, and Annabelle's Caldecott Farms is a big part of the backlash. Don suggests the obvious -- the name is poison, so change it (which, incidentally, Blackwater recently did, end of digression) -- but she doesn't want to do it.
Mad Men's third season opener set a strong stage for things to come.
They stage a focus group, with Annabelle watching from behind the glass. The participants talk about their dog's characteristics and then watch as the pets sample the dog food. The dogs love it! They scarf it down, and their owners are very happy. Then the participants are told it's Caldecott Farms dog food. Oh, no, it's evil! Grim scene.
Pollster Paul Maslin, an old friend who's a great fan of the show, has done about a thosand focus groups. He e-mailed, saying: "I love Draper's line 'Is this your first group?' when the guy comments about how the people are describing themselves and not their dogs. Candidates, too? Sort of, but EveryConsultant Draper has identified another eternal truth as is his wont.
With the grand task of opening a potential client's eyes accomplished, Don takes off for his getaway with Suzanne. We know the rest.
Only two episodes left in the season. With much of the personal side resolved, at least for now, in non-soapy ways, look for big happenings in and around Sterling Cooper and the changing advertising business. Which, along with the rest of America and the world, is going to have a mega-seismic shock to the system three weeks from the end of this episode.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
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... Oh, by the way, the baby is Don's.
See William Bradley's Profile
Oh, by the way, the baby is Don's ...
I love how when a male actor show a little vulnerability and cries it's "Emmy"! Wow, brilliant! When female actors have to do it all the time and no one thinks twice.
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I like how when a woman acts tough, she's praised highly for great acting. Since men do that all the time.
What I find impressive about Hamm's perforance is its layering, and how he shrinks in size during the scene.
I have been trying hard to get into this show. All of the critical acclaim has gotten my attention. But for the life of me, I just couldn't stay with it. For one thing, I have no desire to revisit the early 60's. To look back and relive how awful things were for women in that era, is beyond depressing. Feminism was nowhere in sight. I hated the fashions so much.
However, this episode was the one that finally got me truly involved. The whole dissembling of Don Draper was stunning with impeccable acting. I do think that Betty's woodenness is a function of her character. She really is the epitome of the pseudo-perfect housewife of that era. But watching these two go mano a mano was simply mindblowing. I was mesmerized. I also kept waiting nervously for Suzanne to pop in to see what happened to Don.
I do not want to see the Kennedy assassination revisited in any detail. If it happens, I won't watch. I can't do it. I was thirteen years old when it happened and I don't know that I have ever really completely gotten over it. Just when I think I can look back at President Kennedy or see a documentary about what happened, I fall to pieces. I understand that it is a key reference point for this period series, but I am not up for it.
I think that I am now hooked on this show!
"Feminism was nowhere in sight."
What a joy it must've been to live back then...
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I wonder how much of the audience loves the non-PC nature of the show.
My heart was absolutely in my throat this entire episode! Surprised the big confrontation came so soon, but it created about the best hour of television I have ever seen.
Anyhow...Hamm...damn! What fine acting, but he so over-matched JJ, who is wooden in ALL her scenes, her lines sound recited not FELT. She's the weakest link, acting-wise, though sometimes this woodenness suits the character.
The thing that's so brilliant about MM...aside from Roger Sterling...is that every line of dialogue resonates on so many different levels. During the focus group, when participants start freaking out about their dogs noshing on Mr. Ed, Don snaps at Peggy: Turn it off! To which she replies, "I can't! It's really happening!" Prophetic words for sure!
Like others, I adore Joan and wish she could find her way back to Sterling-Coo. One mis-step of the show is giving her such a blockhead for a husband. Surely, our Miss Joanie would not have married this incompetent boob. And he's a bad actor to boot! Gah! Ship him off, stat!
Finally, my prediction is that MM will not explicitly show the assassination...at the conclusion of the last episode of this season, the screen will go dark, and we'll hear a single gunshot, then actual audio from newscasts of the time. Weiner has said JFK story has been done to death (bad pun not intended); when season 4 starts, I bet Johnson will have already been inaugurated.
Betty is supposed to be "wooden". Her character is a symbolic mannequin representing the bourgeois ideal of the perfect wife/life.
As far as Ms. Jones' acting ability, it can be judged by viewing her performance in the previous indie film Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Luckily in that role, again, she is somewhat typecast as a young, victimized know-nothing bride with a little girl voice, so her inability is not glaring. She plays an excruciatingly mindless mannequin and yet (again) somehow is moving in her own way. Her strange childlike commentary in the DVD extra about Tommy Lee Jones' making of the movie is almost sad to hear.
Having said all that, she still seems to own the part of Betts.
The timing of the this episode, Halloween 1963, is creating as much tension as the teacher waiting outside in the car. We all know that the Kennedy will be dead in a month, that the Beatles are getting ready for Ed Sullivan, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead are getting their first big gigs in mere months, there are mounting troubles in Vietnam. The whole world is getting ready to turn upside down.
don draper wanted to be found out . he takes risks and goes on strange interludes with odd people he lies continually daring people (i.e. betty) to discover the real dick whitman.
as seen in the madmen opening a man is falling from a high building . we all knew don draper was going to crash . it began with the forced signing of the contract with sterling cooper .
we saw bettys potential in europe when she sat at the table with the italian men ogling her . she was a confident woman of the world. when she confronts don she is cold determined and drawing the power he is losing. she now holds the keys to their future .
i dislike roger . he is a direct contrast to don. he is the real thing and whatever he does he comes out on top.
we also saw a side a joan we always knew was there when she hit her husband with the vase.
she already knows she made a mistake and now will go about rectifying it.
i suspect she will be a widow.
sterling cooper and joan and over yet.
i keep thinking one day don will start his own agency and joan along with peggy will be part of it.
i was thinking that joan's departure from the office and peggy being woo'd by duck, would result in joan and peggy forming their own agency.... but then realized this was taking place in the early 60s.
women of that time certainly weren't encouraged unless they had overly indulgent daddies with old money.
.
whatever happened to don's miss minken, the retailer?.
.
*poof she's gone* and starring on sons of anarchy
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the Brits will sell C/S to the company Duck works for. If this happens, the show will likely jump the shark
The department store heiress married a nice, inoffensive fellow. Don and the comedian's wife ran into them in a restaurant. I thought it was mean to at least not have cast an obviously good-looking guy in the role of the husband. She was a catch!
Mr. Bradley: "The Gypsy and the Hobo" are both Don. At the end, Carlton's question is ironic. There is no either/or answer - not for Don or any of us. All the characters in the show put up various facades and attempt to "play their parts." This is the central contradiction of Mad Men (and, dare we say, America - at least early 1960s America). This is neatly wrapped up in the setting of an advertising agency, whose sole function in society is to come up with a million ways to describe what something is not. Brilliant writing.
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Carlton was asking Don AND Betty.
In form, yes, but in literary function? Art works on many levels.
I don't see how you can say that since he was looking directly at Don and the camera was focused on Don. I agree with OhioDem, Dick Whitman is both a gypsy and would have been a hobo if he hadn't put on the mask of Don Draper.
That's right. He was looking right at both of them after he talked to the other pair...their kids.
One of my favorite parts of this episode (other than watch Jon Hamm be BRILLIANT. It made me cry) was when Roger told Annabelle that she wasn't "the one". For some reason when he said that I had a feeling that Jane isn't "the one" either. Maybe a red-haired beauty who is stuck in a bad situation? That was what I thought anyway. Please discuss!
I agree. That "you weren't" was my favorite line of the episode. To tell you the truth, all of Roger's scenes in this episode were genius - especially the phone conversation with Joan (classic line: "There's some people you want to think about you").
"You weren't" was great. Rivaled the great 1st Season line of Bert Cooper's -- Pete exposes Don, and Bert replies, "So what." -- absolutely perfect!
Interesting, Joan being "the one" didn't occur to me at the time.
Yeah, I felt like it finally clicked in his head, as he was saying it. It wasn't you. Ergo, it was... Joan. But then we may all be way more romatic than the characters, or the writers!
I'll bet the last episode, this season, will witness JFK assasination and, in the episodes to follow, how the underlying currents of that event, affect these characters as it did to this country.
One guess: Don will get back with Suzanne, who, more so than Betty, is already in touch with the rest of that decade
Can't wait to see - but I don't want Don back with Suzanne. I keep thinking, althugh Don seemed to have fallen hard for her, Suzanne wouldn't be the proper Sterling Cooper wife at all the events and client dinners. Betty is.
Yes, ICAM Hamm should already be penning those thank yous in his acceptance speech. WOW, his range was on full display and its was spectacular from playful lover, to aggressor, to deer in headlight, to rueful, sobbing husband. Extraordinary. This season we've watched Don get his wings clipped (by signing a contract and now by his wife's curiosity;) a hobo no longer.
I thought Jones' take no prisoner Betty was pitch perfect to Hamm's deflated Don (her grey flannel pants in the scene epitomized her new found power.) Thus on the flip side, Betty has certainly been stretching her wings. First coming out from under the death of her overbearing father, her recognition that her life is a charade, her dalliance with Henry and now with her knowledge that Don is, much to her horror, a complete and utter fraud. I suppose Paradise is indeed Lost, as per her lawyer "Milton."
Another great episode. I would have never thought that the pandora's box would have been pried open so soon - I hope MM hasn't jumped the shark. But Weiner and crew are way to smart to let it go under.
And lastly mad props to my girl Joannie.
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I think the show has bigger fish to fry.
>I would have never thought that the pandora's box would have been pried open so soon - I hope MM hasn't jumped the shark. But Weiner and crew are way to smart to let it go under.
I thought that, too. This secret has been the underlying tension throughout. Where does it go from here? I'm not sure...but I'm willing to go there if only for the dialog. They should screen this series in creative writing classes for the chapters on writing conversation.
Betty has Don over a barrel, prevailing divorce laws notwithstanding. She asks him if what he has done is illegal, and he acknowledges that it is. She could send him to Leavenworth with that knowledge, and it should be interesting to see just what she does with that leverage. As I said in previous posts, she is just beginning to awaken to her potential and her empowerment.
Joining the Army is a surprisingly astute move for the Blockhead, especially considering his rapidly dwindling options. Whether or not he's a non-com, a Captain in the Army gets a lot of bennies not available to a grunt enlistee. He'll also get a couple of years of invaluable practice that could help him land a position once he's back in civilian life. The Army might also "man him up," which is something he needs, desperately. Of course, he could get shipped out to Vietnam, in which case, his "manning up" could lead to an unceremonious body bag.
My wager is Dr. Blockhead gets killed in Vietnam and Joan becomes a traveling folk guitar protest song singer, a la Joan Baez and moves to Haight in San Fran.
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The services always make doctors officers.
It may be good for him. It's not good for joan.
"prevailing divorce laws notwithstanding"
Another interesting twist is that Betty's husband is dead. Don Draper is dead. Her marriage to Dick is invalid. Betty has even more power right now than she realizes.
She has Dick's future in her hands. He goes off with Suzanne -- or anyone -- and Betty can turn him in and he's locked up for fraud -- and for impersonating an army lieutenant.
I see Betty keeping Don's secret, and having an affair with Henry. She's going to turn the tables. But then she becomes complicit in the lie, and their whole marriage takes a turn for the worse. It doesn't look good for those two, and I would love to see them get through this!!
I think the army is a good move for Joan's husband. But I think Joan needs to dump him. She can do better.
"He tells her to stay in the marriage, because New York state law favors the hsband in divorce. Roger's view of New York divorce law, of course, is exactly the opposite."
The family lawyer first gave Betty legal advice. He pointed out the only grounds for divorce under New York law at that time was adultery and adultery is very difficult to prove. This is because even in an uncontested divorce New York requires the testimony of a third-party to prove adultery. He asked if Don wanted a divorce. Betty said no and at that point he said the law favored the husband and that she could lose the children. He then went on to give friend-of-the-family advice that she try to stay in the marriage.
Roger was desperate to marry Jane, giving Mona the upper hand. After the lawyers reached an agreement so costly that Roger had to sell Sterling, Cooper, Mona likely went to Nevada for six weeks and obtained the divorce. Nevada also allows sealed divorce records. In 1962 Tod Rockefeller, the governor's wife, obtained a Reno divorce that remains sealed.
Oklahoma introduced no fault divorce in 1953, but it was its adoption by California in 1969 that set off a wave of divorce reform throughout the country. New York is now the only state that does not provide for no fault divorces, although it added five other grounds in addition to adultery.
So, Betty hires a private detective with the proceeds from daddy's house.
Game over for Don.
>>>> This is because even in an uncontested divorce New York requires the testimony of a third-party to prove adultery.
Right, which is why the first thing Don did was break it off with Suzanne.
The Ep 1 video recap remind me of the bad storytelling around Sal. It's like the writers set up this great situation, did nothing with it, then contrived a crisis. He probably gets axed because of Lee Garner but not so fast and not like that.
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The writers have a lot of terrific characters and stories to service. And not a lot of space for it all.
It's really too bad.
The happy Draper family in Ep 2's recap. That lasted about 5 minutes.
lol
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