Mad Men Season 7, Episode 9, “New Business”

I was somewhat surprised to see Diana the waitress return so prominently in this episode, but midway through, it dawned on me that she’s actually kind of perfect for Don: she matches Don’s humble roots, and she has a world-weariness about her that suggests she knows what a hard life is like (in stark contrast with Don’s ex-wives, both of whom had privileged upbringings). Even more fittingly, eventually she reveals that just like Don, she is also running from a shameful past: her daughter died of the flu. It’s easy to see why Don is drawn to her. However, near the end of the episode she reveals herself not to be as kindred a spirit as she seemed: her pain stems not solely from the death of her daughter, but from her subsequent abandonment of another surviving daughter back in Wisconsin. She turns down Don’s attempts to escalate their romance because being with him makes it easier for her to forget, and unlike him, rather than run from her pain, she wants to hold onto it and remember it. The comfort Don can provide is not what she wants, ultimately.

Moreover, when she reveals that she has another daughter back in Racine, Don seems to be taken aback, which makes sense, considering the reflecting Don has done after learning of Rachel’s death. It seems that what’s gnawing at Don lately is his lack of strong familial ties, especially now that he’s healed his relationship with his professional family (or at least a part of it; he’s on good terms with Peggy, but not Joan). At the start of the episode, Don is playing babysitter, making chocolate milkshakes for his boys in Betty’s house. He leaves when Betty and Henry return from an evening out, but not before turning back to glance at the family scene in the kitchen, a mild look of envy and regret on his face, one which recalls the look on his face as he gazed at Rachel’s kids at the end of the shiva scene from last week. Just as in that episode, here Don is being confronted once again with the life not lived, a happy family (superficially, at least) that was once his, but which he ultimately threw away. Don and Betty had loads of problems as a couple, but seeing Betty, Henry, Bobby, and Gene happy together is hard for him, especially in the wake of his divorce from Megan. Don has nothing like this in his life anymore, at least not with any consistency, and he’s really starting to feel its absence as he gets further into middle age.*

* Or perhaps I'm giving Don too much credit: Alan Sepinwall thinks Don is much less self-aware in this episode than I do. He may very well be right, but it would make this a much less interesting episode.

Don’s longing for family is driven home by the sharp contrast between the start and end of the episode. Don begins the episode longingly gazing at a family tableau in which he no longer has a place, and ends the episode returning to his now completely barren Manhattan apartment, a perfect symbol for how Don feels about what he’s made of his life after two failed marriages and a string of affairs. Thus it’s no wonder he slinks out of Diana’s shithole apartment without a word once she tells him she abandoned a surviving daughter; her actions are anathema to Don at the moment, considering the literal and figurative absences in his own life.* Or perhaps he also realizes that he can’t do anything for her, and that she’s not ready for what he wants. Either way, Don ends the episode fittingly, staring at both an empty romantic future and an equally empty apartment.

* It’s tough to form probable expectations about this show’s plot, but this is where I anticipate a connection with Sally stepping in to fill the void. After all, Sally is somewhat similarly estranged; she’s become a loner, wanting nothing to do with her mother and kept at a distance by her father. Now that Don appears more ready to want a family, I can see him eventually reaching out to Sally and becoming more a part of her life, if it’s not too late. 

The other major business of the episode involved the finalization of Don and Megan’s divorce. In the first half of the episode, Roger – still stinging financially from his divorce from Jane – counsels Don to fight for a fair alimony deal, but Don is confident it won’t be difficult, telling Roger, “Megan is not Jane.” Roger replies skeptically, “So she never said you squandered her youth and beauty? Used up her childbearing years? Thwarted her career?” It’s easy to imagine these accusations coming from Jane, but not from Megan. Yet these are more or less the kinds of things Megan tells Don when he meets her in his attorney’s office.

I was a bit shocked by the degree of rancor Megan has for Don in their scene together. This is quite a departure from their mournful interaction at the end of first half of the season, or even from their interaction earlier in this episode. She says some cutting things here. None of them are untrue, exactly, and while he deserves every single barb, some are a bit unfair. To answer one her questions to him: she believed the things he told her because at one time, they were true, and Don believed them too. He really did love her (or his idealization of her). He lost interest in her because when she quit the agency and then used his connections to help launch her career, she inadvertently betrayed everything he thought she was, as well as the standards he sets for himself. Or, if you want to be cynical, she believed the things he said because he’s in advertising, and because he’s goddamned good at selling ideas to people, ideas about himself included.

Megan’s irritation with Don seems to stem only partly from actually being hurt by him; instead, she seems upset largely because of the disturbance their divorce has created within her family (and her career). The scenes between the Calvet women were nice, as it gave us a lot of insight into their particular brand of dysfunction. Both Megan’s mother and her sister try to be supportive, but they both clearly judge her: her sister sees her as a failure and (apparently) a sinner, pleading with Megan to get an annulment rather than a divorce, while Marie (somewhat correctly) sees her as a victim.

Moreover, the Calvets are a bunch of drama queens. Marie can’t help including herself as Don’s victim as well: she hates what Don has done to “our family,” rather than what he’s done to Megan. This exasperates Megan because Marie appears to be twisting Megan’s divorce into a story about herself. However, a part of me thinks that Marie’s disgust with Don stems partly from her desire to blame Don for her affair with Roger. Of course, Marie is self-aware enough to realize that her and her husband Emile’s unhappiness was more of a cause for her affair with Roger than Don (after all, the ease, subtlety, and regularity with which she indicated her interest in Roger leads me to believe Roger was merely one in a long line of affairs). Moreover, as this episode makes abundantly clear, she clearly doesn’t entirely regret the affair, and in fact is perhaps as eager to rekindle it as Roger.* Nevertheless, it makes for a nice personal drama for her to lump the affair in with Don’s other legitimate transgressions, and she takes it out on his belongings. Marie can’t erase Don from Megan’s past, so instead she settles for erasing his belongings from his present.

* According to Megan’s sister, Marie has decided to stay in New York. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Marie moved in with Roger? Perhaps Roger deserves to be with someone as self-possessed and manipulative as Marie. At least we know that Marie is a match for Roger’s wit. 

In other news, Peggy hires a photographer with serious artistic chops for a vermouth ad: Pima Ryan. I don’t have much to say about this plotline, except that it was nice to see Stan get another B story, especially one that involved him being insecure about his work (a rarity for him, one that brings out some appealing vulnerability). Plus it was also an excuse for a glimpse into Stan’s home life, and his charming relationship with Elaine, who knows that Stan’s creative and bad moods can be difficult to distinguish from one another (or at least, it was charming until Stan cheated on her, after which it was just sad). As for Peggy, perhaps Pima’s success will inspire Peggy to reach out for some independence of her own in subsequent episodes, although that seems unlikely, given that Peggy concludes that Pima is a hustler. This seemed like a fairly inconsequential Peggy episode, and a rather scattered pair of episodes for Peggy overall. I hope for more significant (and frankly, more interesting) Peggy developments in the remaining episodes.

Other thoughts:

- I’m not looking forward to the inevitable Betty-centric episode, but I kind of liked Betty in this one. Used sparingly, and with a de-emphasis on her chronic unhappiness, she can be an effective character, especially when she’s serving as a somewhat self-aware foil to Don. Particularly choice was her response to Don’s incredulity over her decision to get a Masters in psychology: “I know it’s beyond your experience, but people like to talk to me.” To his credit, Don has an equally pithy retort: “It should be fascinating for everyone involved.” Double zings! Who knows? Perhaps Matt Weiner can pull off another episode of the caliber of season 6’s “The Better Half,” which was the last time I found Betty compelling.

- If part of the end game for Don’s story is to have him come to a sort of peace with his past, then his encounter with Diana is a good way of demonstrating that he’s made progress. Diana is a woman who actively prevents herself from achieving peace, which is quite a contrast with Don’s purposes in running from life as Dick Whitman, as well as his more recent attempts to reclaim his past.

- In addition to the contrast between the beginning and end of the episode, the first scene is also contrasted with the one immediately following it: Don returns home from Betty's and receives a phone call from Megan about the logistics of her moving her stuff out of the apartment. Don goes from a pretty picture of home and hearth to the discord of divorce in the space of a single cut.

- Roger’s hubris in firing Ken continues to reap consequences, now in the form of an increased workload. With Bert dead, and Ken, Jim Cutler, and Bob Benson all gone, only Roger and Pete remain to handle the SC&P clients. Roger can no longer skate by as an absentee accounts man.

- A couple of nice Meredith moments in this one: she can’t pronounce Nick Constantinopolis’s name (quite literally sounding out the name as if it were the first time she’s ever heard of a Greek person), and has trouble lugging Don’s golf clubs out of his office. She’s not running over someone’s foot with a lawnmower, but I’ll take it.

- Pima to Stan: “I can feel the tension of your need for my opinion.”

- I liked the exchange between Don, Sylvia, Arnie, and Diana in the elevator, as it gestures toward some drama that must have taken place, but that the show (wisely) elided, namely, Arnie finding out about Don and Sylvia’s affair. Thus the tension between them, including Don not moving to hold the door open for Arnie, and the barbs Arnie directs at Don in hoping to torpedo Don’s evening with Diana. Arnie’s cleverness still charms me, even when he’s using it to be cruel. It’s a fitting sendoff for what is likely the last we’ll see of his character (and Sylvia, mercifully).

- As usual, petulant Pete is the most entertaining Pete. When Don arrives at the office inappropriately dressed for their golf appointment with a client, Don proposes simply to roll up his sleeves and throw his tie over his shoulder, claiming the clients will love it. Pete exasperatedly responds, “They probably will,” before sulking to the elevators.

- A nice moment: Megan turning back to take one last look at the apartment before she goes to meet with Harry. Her love for Don is dead, but she’s not completely devoid of sentimentality.

- Another nice joke at Pete’s expense: Don smokes in their car ride to take his mind off of Pete’s horrendous driving. Really, Pete, how hard is it to drive safely on a country road?

- After Pete’s exasperation, the next biggest laugh line in the episode is Roger’s hasty series of reactions to Marie calling him at the office: confusion; identification; dismissal of Caroline, and “Bonjure?”

- Too many laugh lines in this episode to count, really. Everything that comes out of Roger’s mouth when he and Marie get caught by Megan is gold.

- When Harry meets with Megan, he makes a nicely accurate assessment of Megan’s looks: “You’re like Ali MacGraw and Brigitte Bardot had a baby.” However, he soon scuttles this charm when his cringe-inducing sleaze inevitably bubbles up from the dark depths of his tattered soul. Harry is like a mischievous child, always testing what he can get away with, while fooling no one. His takeaway from his early encounter with Don is that he has permission to hit on Megan, and when that goes about as well as expected, he runs back to Don again and tries to discredit anything Megan might tell him without actually telling Don what happened. Don, of course, see’s right through him (Jon Hamm always plays Don's contempt for Harry very well). Harry has exhausted Don’s recent appreciation for Harry, which was a product of Harry warning Don about Jim’s attempt to oust Don from the agency. Yet Harry still manages to make Don feel guilty by flatly telling him it was stupid for Megan to quit her soap and move to California. As we know, this was Don’s idea, not Megan’s. When Harry cuts the crap, he actually seems to know what he’s talking about. Too bad he’s roughly 90% crap.

- Hey, the address on Don’s check is for 783 Park Ave! Anyone up for a pilgrimage? Eh, Google street view is good enough.

- Perhaps the most cutting of Megan’s remarks to Don is when she says she knows the check isn’t real because nothing about him is. Oof.

- Lots of good cinematography demonstrating how empty Don’s apartment (and life) is in this one.

- I was somewhat surprised by how upset Marie is to be caught in her affair by Megan. Although given Marie’s past behavior, I’d venture that her reaction is only partly a product of having damaged any illusions Megan might have had about her; perhaps equally relevant is that she can no longer look down on Megan with impunity.