Mad Men Season 6, Episode 12, “The Quality of Mercy”

My prediction that Don would use knowledge of Peggy and Ted’s feelings for each other to inflict pain on the pair came to fruition in this week’s episode, in a cruel scene where he let them think that he was on the verge of embarrassing them in front of a client. Ted and Peggy spend most of the episode in a positive reinforcement feedback loop, where their feelings for each other fuel their ideas for St. Joseph, which in turn fuel their feelings, and so on, ad infinitum. It’s as though the ad is taking place of their consummating their attraction to one another, and their giddiness is obvious to everyone around them, including Ted’s secretary, Ginsberg, Joan, and of course Don.

Mad Men Season 6, Episode 11, “Favors”

Roger begins this week’s episode by revealing that he can juggle, telling Don, “See? Not all surprises are bad.” However, this episode features a number of characters discovering surprises, nearly all of them construed as bad. The biggest and most portentous is a pair of mutual surprises Don and Sally give one another: Sally surprises Don by walking in on his latest tryst with Sylvia, while Don surprises Sally by revealing himself as a philanderer. My predictions about Don and Sylvia’s affair leading to disaster seem to have come to fruition, or very nearly so. After their mutual surprises, Don and Sally next confront one another late in the episode, at Megan's dinner table, where Sally cannot meet Don's eyes. When Arnold and his son Mitchell make an appearance to thank Don for helping Mitchell avoid becoming a draft dodger, Don gets Arnold’s thanks, which prompts Megan to fawn over how sweet Don is for helping their neighbors (an about-face from his disinterest earlier in the episode). This display of hypocrisy is too much for young Sally, who shouts at Don what many viewers have long wanted to shout many times over the course of Mad Men’s run: “You make me sick!” She then storms out of the dining room and locks herself in her bedroom. It’s a cathartic moment for those of us who’ve wanted Don to get his act together (although this shock is unlikely to change his habits or increase self-understanding), but it is also a profoundly sad moment, as it is a product of the destruction of whatever faith Sally still had in her father. However, once again, what’s bad for characters is exciting for viewers: this development significantly shifts the power relations between them, as Sally indicates when she subsequently refuses to open her door for Don, stating, “You don’t get to talk to me anymore.” Perhaps Don being beholden to Sally will lead Don to being a more attentive parent in a (futile?) attempt to redeem himself; or perhaps Sally will simply use her knowledge to try to manipulate Don – she would certainly do so were the same thing to happen between her and Betty.

Mad Men Season 6, Episode 10, “A Tale of Two Cities”

This week’s episode is titled “A Tale of Two Cities,” and revolutionary motifs and themes ripple throughout the episode, which takes place in the midst of the riots during the 1968 democratic convention in Chicago. Various plot threads explore the conflicts and contrasts between the older generation of hard line conservatives and the politically active American youth culture, and the way in which the Mad Men’s characters navigate this “revolutionary” divide.

Mad Men Season 6, Episode 9, “The Better Half”

After last week’s disappointment, this week’s episode is a return to form: a masterful hour of television, through and through. There are so many great developments it’s hard to know where to start, but I’ll begin with Peggy’s storyline, which is the most symmetrical of the episode. Finally, Mad Men is paying off the promise of the merger in episode six with the kind of Don-Peggy-Ted professional “love” triangle storyline I had been hoping for, one that places front and center the conflicting personalities, loyalties, histories, and egos that inform these three characters’ relationships. Peggy starts the episode in the uncomfortable position of being fought over by her two mentors, and ends the episode with both of them boxing her out physically and emotionally, literally shutting their office doors on her. In a wonderful touch, the complete reversal of her relationships with them is emphasized ironically through her starting and ending the episode in the exact same physical location: midway between Don and Ted’s offices, just outside of the conference room.

Mad Men Season 6, Episode 8, “The Crash”

Given how invested Don was in his affair with Sylvia, I suppose some emotional fallout was inevitable. And given my relative disinterest in Don's affair with Sylvia, I found this to be the most lackluster episode of the season thus far, despite all of the whacked out, druggy behavior from Don and others at SCDP. We’ve never seen Don flail about this much after the end of an affair. He’s like a teenage lover who can’t figure out how to get over his first heartbreak, and who thinks that his ex can somehow be talked back into their relationship, if only he could figure out the right combination of words. And that’s precisely what he spends nearly the entire episode attempting to do, as he descends into a speed-induced frenzy. Don has made his way in the world based on the power of his ability to convince people of what he wants them to think – that he’s Don Draper, that his ad campaigns are brilliant, that he’s a devoted husband – thus Don is extra-frustrated that Sylvia has stopped buying what he’s selling, especially considering the importance he places on this particular sale.

Mad Men Season 6, Episode 7, “Man with a Plan”

This week’s episode continues the trend of a character spouting the opposite of one of the themes that can be read out of the episode. Early on, Sylvia beckons Don to a midday tryst by calling him to say, “I need you, and nothing else will do.” Throughout the episode, however, we see repeatedly how people are able to easily take the place of one another (or how people fret about how replaceable they are), as SCDP and CGC deal with the inevitable layoffs stemming from the merger:

 

Mad Men Season 6, Episode 6, “For Immediate Release”

Joan spelled out the theme of this week’s stellar episode most explicitly in her bitter, emotionally charged confrontation with Don: “Just once, I would like to hear you use the word ‘we,’ because we’re all rooting for you from the sidelines, hoping that you decide whatever you think is right for our lives.” However, behaving as a part of a team rather than as an individual is something all of the characters struggle with this week, as nearly everyone indulges in a series of impulsive decisions: