Mad Men Season 5, Episode 13: “The Phantom”

For Don, this whole season has been about the changed man he has become after his marriage to Megan, but it ends with a question about how much he’s actually changed, and a strong implication that it’s less than the we might hope. However, before getting to the fantastic scene that concludes this season, let’s back up and think about how this episode leads up to that point.

Megan’s friend from acting class gives Megan the idea to ask Don for a part in a shoe commercial being produced by SCDP. Don is genuinely surprised at her request, but he’s also disappointed. He tells Megan, “You don’t want it this way. You want to be someone’s discovery, not someone’s wife.”  This might be partially true for Megan, but it’s even truer for Don. While it was difficult for him, he could ultimately accept her rejection of a promising career in advertising in order to follow her dreams. Don is (or was) a creative person himself, so a part of him could sympathize with Megan’s desire to explore her own creativity through acting. Plus, Don's experience with Betty is a cautionary tale for what happens when you deny someone their dreams.

However, for Don, there are no short cuts to success. Despite his leaving Michael’s Snoball pitch in the cab earlier this season, Don tends to believe that talent wins in the end. It’s a reasonable worldview for someone like Don, considering that he climbed the advertising ranks using nothing but his own talent and hard work (and the name of a dead man). In asking him to use his position at SCDP to get her an audition for a commercial, Megan is not living up to the standards Don has set for himself, and certainly not the idealistic view he’s had of her as an artist who does not want to compromise herself through advertising. In other words, for Don, Megan’s request of him is a betrayal of both his ideals and his idealization of her, both of which have been his principle ways of coping with her leaving SCDP.

At the same time, we can also see things from Megan’s perspective. She sorely wants some sort of affirmation of her talents, and she wants Don’s unmitigated support in the pursuit of her career. Don’s conflict of interest over her potential success is very difficult for her, and she can’t help but suspect him of putting his desires above hers in his reactions to her successes or failures (an issue they discussed explicitly last week). We see this difficulty and this suspicion in her hiding the return of her reel in the mail, as well as her reactions to his initial denial of her request to audition for the shoe commercial: she fills the bathtub to hide the sound of her sobbing, and then gets drunk the next day.

It’s during a drunken outburst that she spells out what she thinks is going in Don’s head: He won’t give her a chance either because he wants her to be a kept woman, waiting for her when he gets home, or because he thinks she’s a bad actress and doesn’t want to sandbag the commercial. Since he doesn’t know her capabilities as an actress because he’s never seen her act, she infers that it must be the former. It’s also clear that Marie thinks the same thing, as she tells him, “Nurse her through this defeat, and you shall have the life you desire.” That’s just the problem though: neither he nor Megan ever wanted Megan to be a stay at home wife. Don wanted Megan to be the Hepburn to his Tracy, but Megan wanted to actually be Hepburn.

While Don never wanted Megan to wait on him hand and foot, there is some truth to Megan and Marie’s inference about Don’s behavior. Don feels disappointed and betrayed, but he is also somewhat fearful that Megan’s possible success would take her away from him. This is what he thinks happened with Peggy a few episodes ago, and he says as much to Peggy when they run into each other at a movie theater in the finale (even if we know Peggy’s leaving was partly caused by Don’s treatment of her). Don tells Peggy he’s at peace with her leaving SCDP when he says, “That’s what happens when you help someone. They succeed and move on.” While this statement applies to his relationship with Peggy (more below on their scene together), it also applies to his feelings about Megan and her career. Moreover, we can see these thoughts run through his mind as he views Megan’s acting reel late at night at SCDP. He smiles as he watches Megan; she looks radiant, and he’s proud that she’s his wife. But then his smile sours as he watches her act. One could read his reaction as his thinking she’s no good, but from what we see of it, she appears to be pretty good, thus I think it more likely that his reaction is a product of the part of him that fears losing her.

All of these developments culminate in the final few scenes of the episode, where we see that Don has acquiesced to Megan’s request, and that she has been cast in the commercial. For Megan, this act heals her woes: Don loves her so much that he wants her to be successful even if it ultimately means he might see less of her. For Don, however, it means something else entirely: disappointment, betrayal, and one further step down the path of their growing apart, a sentiment conveyed visually by the beautiful, mesmerizing shot of Don striding away from the commercial set and into the darkness of an empty soundstage. As we hear the beginning of Nancy Sinatra’s rendition of “You Only Live Twice,” the set recedes into the background, Megan along with it.

This shot perfectly sets up final scene of the season, where Don enters a bar with an air of resignation, orders his usual old fashioned, and is promptly propositioned by a beautiful woman who asks if he is alone. Don stares at his drink for a long moment before turning to look at her, his face a mix of indifference and intrigue, and the season ends as he contemplates his reply. Given the last shot of the previous scene, and what both this episode and this season has shown us about Don, the show seems to provide a strong indication of what the nature of his response will be. It’s a marvelous way to end to both the episode and the season.

In other developments, what a relief it was to see Peggy again, and then what a treat it was for her to have a scene with Don! Her scenes this week seem like clear evidence that Matt Weiner has no desire to write her out of the show. I never seriously thought it a possibility, considering that unlike other characters who disappear after leaving Sterling Cooper or SCDP (poor Sal, Paul, Ken for a bit, Freddie, etc.), Peggy is such a central part of the show that until last week, she was one of the few characters other than Don to appear in nearly every episode. Nonetheless, I was still relieved that she showed up this week, and for her to appear in the season’s closing montage along with all of the other major regulars at SCDP.

Moreover, each of her three scenes is great. It was a nice surprise to see her in her office at her new firm, as this was something I thought we’d have to wait until season six to see. We get an inkling here that things are not as ideal as she’d hoped they would be. She has her own team of semi-competent underlings to harass (how very Don Draper of her to yell at them for failing to correctly perform what for her is a simple copywriting task), but she seems rather put off by Ted Chaough blatantly disregarding that she's not a smoker when he assigns her Virginia Slim. While she’s happy to have the responsibility and the confidence of someone like Ted (and perks like plane rides and hotel rooms), Peggy’s creativity has always stemmed from who she is as a person as well as a woman. Ted’s refusal to listen to her protests about not being a smoker seems to confirm that he hired her for two reasons: she’s a woman, and she was Don’s woman. The job is still too new for it to really bother her much yet, but I think Peggy may eventually chafe at Ted’s treatment of her if he continues to disregard who she is in favor of what she represents. Her last scene in the episode, during the concluding montage, encapsulates rather well the minor discord evident here: she’s enjoying the amenities of a hotel stay (possibly the first of her life), but outside the room, she spies two dogs fucking, something that doesn’t quite jive with the picturesque fantasy she’s trying to maintain.

The scene between Don and Peggy at the theater is mostly warm and fuzzy: Don is proud of her, and she shows herself to be every bit his protégé by appearing in the theater in the middle of the day in the first place, and they both know it. It seems to get a bit awkward when Peggy tells Don to give her love to Megan and brings up the possibility of their getting together socially, although this could also just be a result of the movie starting.

Poor, sociopathic Pete. He comes to a self-aware realization during his visit with Beth in the mental ward after she willingly undergoes shock therapy. Under the pretense of speaking about a “friend,” he tells her his affair with her made him realize that, “His life with his family was some temporary bandage on a permanent wound.” It’s a beautiful piece of writing, and a touching performance by Vincent Kartheiser. Realizing you’ve always been broken and that the things you’re trying to do to fix yourself are only stopgap measures probably doesn’t make life any easier, although now Pete simply seems resigned, rather than restless, so perhaps it’s an improvement. His self-awareness makes him becomes slightly more sympathetic again, or at least pitiable – better to know your misery is a disease rather than to blunder through life blaming it on others (ahem, Betty). Even sadder, his realization comes only slightly before Trudy acquiesces to his request for an apartment in the city (itself an indirect product of Pete getting the shit beat out of him – for the second time this season – after fighting on the train, first with Beth’s husband Howard, and then with a conductor). Before, Trudy’s decision would have pleased him, at least for a little while, but now he knows it won’t really help to alleviate his malaise, and we can see it on his face when Trudy tells him her decision. It’s another treatment of a symptom, not a cure for his ails.

Other thoughts:

- Megan’s actress friend couldn’t be more wrong about Marie being “elegant and encouraging.” Marie covered nicely for her slip about the casting agency taking advantage of Megan’s “hopelessness” by implying her phrasing was a failure of her English, and that she actually meant that they were taking advantage of Megan’s hope. However, later in the episode, we discover in her conversation with Don that she actually feels that Megan is indeed hopeless, cursed with an artistic mentality but without any artistic merit. Moreover, she seems to have a complete disinterest in comforting a disillusioned Megan. If this is what Megan’s upbringing was like, perhaps she has more in common with Don than we realized.

- I liked the moment in the partners’ meeting where Joan asks if there are any objections, and Joan looks at Lane’s empty chair, and then says, “I’m sorry, but I feel someone has to voice the negatives.” No wonder Lane had trouble making friends at SCDP.

- Roger pretending to be French is hilarious, as is his ending the season on another LSD trip, standing naked in front of a window. Perhaps we’ll see a return of enlightened Roger in later seasons (or a drug-addled Roger).

- Last week, Sepinwall really nailed the connection between Lane’s suicide and Don’s half brother Adam’s suicide. This week, he's proven right, as Adam kept showing up out of the corner of Don’s eye, and then Don had a drug-induced talk with him after Don fails to console Lane’s widow with money (Adam's line about Don's tooth not being the only thing that's rotten is the only thing a bit too on the nose for me). The scene with Mrs. Pryce was just as much an attempt for Don to appease his own conscience as it was to do right by the Pryce family, and the same goes for Don’s advice to Joan in their scene together, where they discuss Lane. It makes sense for them to discuss Lane’s death, as they were probably the two characters closest to him (which really shows how distant he was from everyone else, considering that he wasn’t all that close with Don). Don is so resolute in his advice to Joan because he knows from experience not to think about why Lane did what he did, nor what anyone could have done to stop it. This has been his coping mechanism, and it must be a good one, considering he’s much more culpable in Lane’s suicide (and Adam’s) than Joan is. Equally great is the knowing look Joan gives Don when he asks what she could have given Lane that he would have wanted. Christina Hendricks is magnificent here.

- SCDP is feeling Peggy’s absence. Don and Michael continue to butt heads, and we see that Michael handles stubborn clients almost as poorly as Peggy did earlier this season. From their first appearance at the end of season four, when they demanded Peggy come up with pitch after pitch on the spot, Topaz has always been a finicky client. This episode, we see that for them, the shine has worn off Michael (who appears more disheveled now than ever before – there are huge stains on his shirt).

- Good episode title. Marie describes Megan’s desire for an acting career as her “chasing a phantom,” but the phrase is just as applicable to Don, who now seems to think that the woman he thought he was marrying is only a phantom.

- Finally, it is a gorgeously directed episode as well. The finale is full of marvelous images in addition to the shot of Don walking away from the set near the episode’s end. Such shots include the five partners standing equidistant from one another as they admire their new office space (nicely set up in the shot that opens the scene, as first Pete and Don appear to Joan’s left, and then Roger and Bert to her right), and the entire production design of the bar in the season’s final scene. I was also taken with the scene where Don watches Megan’s reel. Smoke drifting in front of projector light is almost always beautiful.

Mad Men Season 5, Episode 12: “Commissions and Fees”

Matt Weiner has said that the theme of this season is “everyone for themselves.” Again and again, through nearly all of the big and many of the small developments this season, we’ve seen this theme manifest in the mindset and behavior of the characters: Don’s hedonistic “love leave” comes at the expense of SCDP; Megan quits her advertising career to focus on her acting dream; Peggy leaves SCDP to advance her career; Joan prostitutes herself for a partnership; Michael and Peggy each bilk Roger for under-the-table work he throws their way; Don leaves Michael’s Snoball pitch in the cab, and so on and so forth. Lane’s embezzlement of company money to pay his taxes is yet another prime example, and in “Commissions and Fees,” we finally see some of the saddest consequences of this mindset. In the payoff to what other critics have described as an excessive amount of foreshadowing of something tragic befalling one of the SCDP partners, Lane hangs himself rather than deal with the shame of being fired by Don once Don discovers what Lane has done.*

 * Many fingered Pete as the possible character on death’s door: among the many signs are his terrible driving, and his doodling a noose on a notepad at one point.

Lane’s predicament and suicide demonstrates the “everyone for themselves” theme in at least two different ways. First, his suicide is a selfish act in itself – he’s depriving his family of a husband and father, rather than suffering a measure of humiliation. We never met his son, but it’s clear that his adoring wife would have certainly preferred a living Lane to one stained by charges of embezzlement. Moreover, neither she nor anyone else but Don would have even known about the reason for Lane’s firing – Don gives Lane the opportunity to use the quick thinking he’d demonstrated all throughout the season and make up anything he wanted as a reason for his leaving. But apparently, carrying his secret shame in his heart was more than Lane could bear.

The second way in which Lane’s predicament demonstrates “everyone for themselves,” is through Don’s reaction to discovering Lane’s theft. Rather than give Lane a second chance, he fires him without much hesitation. I’m of two minds about Don’s decision. On the one hand, I sympathize with Don; he is correct when he tells Lane that he is being lenient, considering the other options available to him (firing Lane and letting others know why, or pressing charges against Lane), and it is understandable that Don would feel he couldn’t trust Lane again. On the other hand, Don is also being somewhat severe here. This is Lane we’re talking about, a character who has devoted as much time and energy to the firm as Don (perhaps more, this season), and whose until-now unwavering foresight has helped keep the firm afloat these past two seasons. Hell, the two even bonded over prostitutes last season, although that probably doesn’t count for much in Don’s book, considering everything else he did or was implied to have done during his “lost weekend” period. Thus while Don does try to comfort Lane (I particularly like his advice about this being the worst part about starting over), his firing Lane reads a bit cold.

Lane certainly doesn’t help his case by at first attempting to deny that he forged Don’s signature, and then by indignantly attempting to justify his decision when Don asks why he didn’t just ask for help: “Why suffer the humiliation for a thirteen day loan? That was my money!” If Don seemed on the fence before, Lane’s reaction here seems to seal his fate. A man who would steal rather than suffer the humiliation of asking for help is not someone Don can trust, and we see it on Jon Hamm’s face as looks away, shakes his head, and says he’ll need Lane’s resignation. Only then does Lane think to apologize, but it’s too little too late.

Regardless of whether one thinks Don acted to severely in firing Lane, once Don discovers Lane’s suicide, and the “boilerplate” note he leaves behind, it seems that Don feels the full impact of the pitfalls of “everyone for themselves.” Don never suspected that the severity of Lane’s shame would lead him to suicide, but Don clearly feels he’s at least partly to blame for it; had he given Lane another chance, Lane almost certainly doesn’t hang himself. We can see this thought run through his mind in his multiple reactions to the news: he first sits down and holds his head in his hands, then insists on taking down the body before the coroner arrives, and then solemnly stares at floor after hearing Roger describe the suicide note. His sick expression here is rather devastating, and while he may or may not blame himself, he must now carry the secret of Lane’s suicide, lest he destroy what the suicide attempted to preserve: Lane’s pride.*

*Although Don will doubtlessly tell Megan, who already knows that he had to fire Lane. Also, I wouldn’t put it past Bert to put two and two together and infer what must have happened, as he’s shown some remarkable intuition in the past. However, whether or not he’d approach Don with this information is another matter.

The scenes where the characters discover the body and the aftermath were also very well done. Joan, intuitive as she is, knows what’s wrong as soon as she spots the chair through the crack in the door – combined with the smell and her difficulty opening it, there is probably little doubt in her mind. However, it’s a sight she’d rather spare herself, so she has Pete, Harry, and Ken confirm her suspicions by peaking over the top of the office partition. Sad as this moment is, I very much enjoyed Christina Hendricks’ performance here: her quick dash from Lane’s office door to Pete’s office conveyed just the right sense of mounting urgency (and perhaps panic) over her hypothesis, as does her phrasing of her suspicions to Pete, Harry, and Ken. Her bursting into tears upon seeing Pete’s reaction (which itself was quite good in its understatement – a hand to the mouth) was also pitch perfect: she’s lost a friend, and also might feel guilty for kicking Lane out of her office the last time they spoke (if she’s even thought of that yet).

Additionally, I like that the show withheld the sight of Lane’s body until near the episode’s end: our finally seeing it at the same time as Don allows the hanging’s gruesomeness to impact us just as it must Don, even if we aren’t as shocked as Don is. We don’t see the body until Don, Roger, and Pete pry their way into Lane’s office, and Lane suddenly comes into view as the door slams shut under the weight of his swinging corpse. The three stand there for a moment, dumbfounded, before cutting him down. I couldn’t help but think about these characters’ history here; Roger and Don have both been in wars and have seen corpses before (including the real Don Draper’s); for them, this is a somewhat familiar sight, although nonetheless still a shocking one. However, this is likely Pete’s first face to face encounter with death, thus his slightly greater discomfort. There’s no evidence for it, but these characters are so well-established by this point that I imagine Pete is relieved he doesn’t have to touch the body.

We get a little bit of night and day with Betty and Sally in this episode. The two are perfectly nasty with one another at the episode’s start. Betty is frustrated by Sally’s disinterest in the ski trip and her desire to stay with Don and Megan in Manhattan. Betty accuses Sally of trying to ruin the trip with her attitude, and then threatens to lock her in a trunk (straight from the good parenting playbook!), while Sally is equally nasty in turn, basically telling Betty that her idea of vacation is inferior to Don and Megan’s, and also gets in a dig at Betty’s weight when she says that Megan lets her eat whatever she wants (the implication being that Betty doesn’t do so because of the changes she’s made to the family diet since starting Weight Watchers). Sally, unsurprisingly, is becoming quite good at manipulating both of her parental sets, this time successfully getting Betty to give her to Don and Megan for the weekend by implying how much more she likes Megan. It’s easy to see why, of course: Betty’s can be a monster, whereas Megan’s like a cool older sister.

However, once Sally get’s her period, she runs to Betty for support and guidance; despite how terrible she can be, Betty is still her mother, and sometimes, you just need your parents, even if they’re cruel. And to her credit, Betty takes it in stride, instantly forgetting Sally’s previous behavior and the $25 fare from her taxi back from Manhattan, and comforting her as best she can. Still, a part of me is very skeptical of Betty: I wonder how much of her positive attitude toward Sally in this later set of scenes is a product of her care for Sally, and how much is a product of Sally providing Betty with the validation she constantly, incessantly seeks. A fifty-fifty split seems rather generous, and we can see her rather pointed self-satisfaction when she tells Megan what happened over the phone, first implicitly chastising Megan’s negligence, and then coolly saying, “I think she just needed her mother.” She might as well have added, “And that’s me and not you!” and then stuck out her tongue. I also thought it was funny that in explaining menstruation to Sally, Betty seems somewhat relieved to finally be able to share with her daughter the “burden” of womanhood. In telling Sally being a woman is a lot of responsibility, it almost seemed as though Betty was justifying her dour view of life: “You see? On top of everything else, we also have to deal with this. Now you know why I’m always miserable.” On the other hand, it can be difficult to raise teenagers, so Betty’s relief at Sally’s turning to her and not Megan in her time of need is somewhat understandable, if somewhat undeserving, considering that she’s such a lousy parent in the first place.

Other thoughts:

- Lane asks his wife where she got the money for the surprise Jaguar gift, and she obliviously replies, “I wrote a check!” Granted, Lane doubtlessly hid from her the state of their finances, but for someone married to an accountant, she seems to have difficulty grasping where money comes from.

- The show couldn’t resist adding a little humor to Lane’s suicide. Bert’s attitude toward Jaguar (“They’re lemons! They never start.”) proves prophetic, as Lane’s first attempt to die by inhaling the exhaust fumes from his wife’s Jaguar purchase are foiled when he can’t get the car to start.

- Loved Don’s nonchalance about Betty’s wanting to kill Sally over her resistance to the ski trip: “Well, if you think killing her is the only way out of that [ruining the trip]…”

- At least one good thing seemed to come from Don firing Lane: it seems to have lit a fire in Don’s belly. After demanding Lane’s resignation, Don bursts into Roger’s office with a head full of steam and complains to Roger about wanting to land big accounts. Catching Lane’s embezzlement has also seemed to motivate Don to absolve himself of a guilty conscious. He tells Roger what Ed Baxter said to him at the American Cancer Society dinner about never landing any of the big companies that attended the dinner. When Roger asks why Don didn’t tell him about it, Don replies, “Because I wrote that letter.”

- The meeting with Baxter also motivates a bit of vintage Don and Roger tag team: Roger provides Don with a pep talk in the elevator after scheduling the meeting, and they work together beautifully during Don’s very aggressive pitch. It’s like we’re back in season one!

- What’s more alarming is that after firing Lane, Don does not blanch at Ken’s conflict of interest regarding Dow Chemical. When Roger says Ken is squeamish about working with his father-in-law, Don replies coldly, “Then fire him.” Not quite thinking that one through, Don – firing Ed Baxter’s son-in-law is unlikely to do you any favors in winning Ed Baxter’s business. Roger realizes this and takes a more subtle (and satisfying) approach to Ken, one that allows both he and Ken to stick it to Pete at the same time: Ken gets to preserve his relationship with his wife and father-in-law by being “forced” onto the account, and Pete is decidedly not on the account. Should they land it, it would dwarf all of Pete’s hard work over the past two years.

- Ken also gets in a nice dig at Roger and the rest of the partners who agreed to Joan’s prostitution-for-partnership deal: he doesn’t want a partnership because he’s “seen what’s involved.”

- I thought it was funny that Don is able to instantly defuse Megan’s ire over not being told about Sally’s arrival with the news of his having to fire Lane. It’s easy to imagine that if Megan was similarly upset about something else on Monday, the whammy of Lane’s suicide would have also trumped whatever might have been bothering her.

- Roger’s enlightenment wore off. Shame.

- We get a lot of Glen this episode, which is unfortunate, because given the limitations of Matt Weiner’s son’s acting, Glen works best in small, creepy doses. Still, the episode ends with a nice touch: reacting to the guilt he feels over Lane’s suicide, Don first offers to drive Glen back to school, and then in an effort to show Glen that not all things that you think will make you happy turn into “crap,” he lets Glen drive his car. It’s a small attempt on Don’s part to provide some measure of karmic compensation for Lane’s suicide. Don might have squashed all of Lane’s hope, but at least he can make sure that the hope with which Glen started the day doesn’t remain totally unfulfilled.

UPDATE: In an interview with Sepwinwall Jared Harris talks about how neither Jon Hamm, John Slattery, nor Vincent Kartheiser had seen what Harris looked like in his hanging makeup prior to shooting a take where they burst through his door. No wonder they look dumbfounded. Near the end, there's also a nice comment about why Lane chooses to hang himself in the office.