Mad Men

Mad Men

Episode 7: Red in the Face

By: Carlos Uribe

Mad Men is a show about people who work in the advertising agencies in the 60's. It currently airs on AMC.

Spoilers Ahoy!

One notable feature of this show is just how stiff and manufactured it can feel. There's numerous scenes where it honestly feels like the show wants the characters to try and hide their emotions as much as they want. It seems that it wants subtlety to an extreme. It could also make it difficult to determine exactly what a character is feeling and it continues to make it difficult for me to connect with most of the characters. An aspect of the show that critics seem to love is how every detail is done on purpose. While that's commendable, it has left the show feeling more like a piece of fiction than something that is truly believable. I bring this up now because it was very noticeable in this episode. For instance, this episode had Betty flirting with Sterling. At least that's how the show wanted the viewer to perceive it. It instead came across as Betty merely being a good host with Sterling. The show wanted me to read into it but because it's trying so hard that the message ultimately gets lost. This seems to be fine with most critics but it makes hard for me to figure out what exactly a character's motivation is. After spending seven episodes with them, I still don't really know who a single person is. This isn't a problem of emotional connection but a lack of ability by the show to communicate who the characters are supposed to be.

The main plot of the show, if you can call it that, is Sterling comes over to the Draper household for a homecooked meal. Betty allegedly flirts with him and this causes him to make a move when Don is out of the room. While Betty shoots him down, she refuses to tell Don the truth. Why? The show seems to suggest that Betty actually likes the attention but she's ashamed to admit it. Don is too wise and exacts his revenge on Sterling. It's a subtle revenge. Don pays the elevator man to pretend that the elevators are temporarily down when Sterling and him go to lunch. This means that Sterling and Don have to go up the stairs to get to a meeting that they are both late to. While climbing stairs isn't normally an ideal for most Americans, it can be quite a chore when it's a skyscraper and you're nowhere near the bottom. Don is able to get up with little problems, but Sterling throws up right in front of the clients. These clients being the Republican Party. The main plot continues to show that Don loves Betty even if he doesn't seem to love living with her. The show also uses this plot to further hint at Don's past and causing a rift between Sterling and Don. This would be working much better if we knew what the relationship meant for the two. We know that they're friends but not why or how significant this friendship ultimately is.

While Don's personal and work life collide, Pete has to deal with a dominant domestic issue. That issue is that he has received two similar wedding gifts. He decides to return one of them only to discover that he'll receive only store credit for it. He buys a gun but this causes an argument with his wife. That scene where she chews him out is inadvertently made funnier than it's meant because she doesn't actually appear in the scene. It simply felt odd to have a character screaming at her husband while not being visibly there. This creates a dissonance between what the viewer is watching and what the show was intending. It's hard to connect with that scene simply because it looks so rushed and incomplete. It feels like she's supposed to actually be in the scene but they couldn't make the schedule work for the actress. This mundane fight seems to lead Pete and Peggy getting closer together. What brings them in the same room together is Peggy's copy but what keeps them together is Pete's wish to reveal why he bought the gun.

Betty wasn't just flirting with Sterling in this episode. She also had a confrontation with Helen. Helen's not happy that Betty gave a locket of her hair to Glenn and she tries to make her feelings known. One thing that the show had managed to establish is that Betty is acting sort of like a child. She's having petty insecurities. This is established by her therapist at the beginning of the episode and the scene with Helen seems to confirm it. At least, I think that's what was supposed to get across. Betty slaps Helen and rushes out of the market. This action along with her flirting with Sterling and making pot roast to annoy her husband to seem to indicate that Betty isn't acting very mature. There are suggestions that there are deeper issues that grip Betty but right now only the minor ones are expressing themselves. What is a bit odd is that the episode felt the need to establish Betty's childish antics by telling us before showing us. This seems to suggest that even the show knows that it might have trouble communicating with the audience.

Some could make the claim that maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to enjoy Mad Men. I would counter that's not a proper criticism to make. The problem with Mad Men is that it simply is hard to connect with the people. That's not a problem of sophistication but with being pretentious. The Mona Lisa isn't one of the most famous paintings in the world because it's complex but because it's simply good. If this show could find a way to write relatable characters without losing it's intelligence then it could be more accessible without sacrificing it's quality. This stiffness that the show has is the biggest problem of the show at the moment.