"The Benefactor"

Since I've just started watching 'Generation Kill' as well, I'm just gonna go ahead and start a new topic, "T.V. Notes". I'll be commenting on it and Mad Men in that section, as well as any other T.V. related topics I can scrounge up.

Episode 3, season 2 "The Benefactor"

-This episode's full of uncomfortable moments, as the popular comedian hired to promote potato chips in a t.v. commercial cruelly insults the sponsor's wife. (She's pretty big.) Don is drafted to perform what is now known as 'Damage Control'. In other words, he has to get the comedian, the comedian's wife/manager, and the sponsors together so's the comedian can apologize for his behavior. The second story thread has Harry bucking for a higher star at Sterling-Cooper. (This starts when Harry opens Ken Cosgrove's paycheck 'by mistake' and discovers Ken makes a hundred dollars more than him. Meanwhile, Betty flirts with and then rejects the advances of another patron of her riding club.

-The scene with Betty and the young Lothario at her riding club make me think she's starting to extend her powers of seduction a little more than the season's premier, where she got the mechanic to install her car's belt for free.

-One of Mad Men's trademarks is how certain scenes bounce off each other in subtle ways. Note how the final scene of Don with Betty has an uneasy tone to it, compared with the scene of Harry cuddling up to his wife's pregnant stomach after he told her of his promotion. Don goaded Betty into helping him smooth things over with the chip people, and Harry's wife inadvertently goaded him into going for a raise.

-Dig how Roger gives Harry a mock benediction in promoting him to 'head of T.V.'. I bet it was an ad lib by actor John Slatterly, who has an awesome perverse sense of humour in his commentaries on the DVD.

-Peggy stands out in this episode in her one scene, since she's in the room where the 'crew' is watching a controversial episode of 'The Defenders', going on Harry's suggestion that their lipstick client may be willing to sponsor controversy to gain customers. They aren't, but the move impresses Roger Sterling enough to get Harry a promotion and a raise. Anyways, note how uncomfortable Peggy is while watching the show. It's about a teenager getting a 'rhymes-with-gagortion'. Oh, she can relate...

-and the awkward pleasantries between Sal and the lipstick rep. (who tried to seduce Sal last season. Cough.)

-What foreign movie was Don watching at the show's beginning? And why? It wasn't Hiroshima Mon Amour, was it?

-I love the near-silent scene at the beginning where Harry's trying to find a way to repair Ken's opened pay stub envelope.

-Don seems cartoonishly confident of his sex appeal this episode, as evidenced by his 'persuasion' of the comedian's wife to make her meal ticket apologize to the sponsors. Not a very sincere apology, either. We'll be seeing more of Jimmy and Bobbie. Is Don so disgusted of her (and himself) that he has to use dish soap to wash out his mouth when he gets home? Yes.

-Notice how Jimmy Barrett none-too-subtly bites his fist when the fat wife says that she's not sure she's 'big enough to accept' his apology. BTW, Bobbie Barrett is played by Melinda McGraw, who was Jim Gordon's wife in the Batman movies...

-Fred Rumsen drunkenly dozes off during the ad shoot, leading to crass comedian Jimmy Barrett to insult the client's fat wife, and his penance is a tart riposte from Ken. On the other hand, Don's secretary gets fired, simply because she didn't cover up enough for Don. It's a man's world, baby...