Mad Men Recap: Severance And The Onset of the 1970s

Matthew Weiner organized Mad Men like a novel. Now, as the story coalesces, we scurry back for details from previous chapters. To understand the first episode of 1970, we must head back to the first episode from 1960. Everything has changed over a tumultuous decade. But, at the same time, little has. Characters have what they want on paper and can only ask if “that’s all there is?”

Men leer at women at work in the opening scene. Instead of Peggy being advised to show a little more leg for Don in the first episode, we have a model in a fur coat literally showing a lot more leg for Don during a casting session. The work climate is purportedly less sexual, yet the advertising has become less subtle than 1960’s strip club where Pete’s bachelor party took place.

Joan and Peggy are “the landing party” for a gaggle of giggling boys from McCann meeting about a pantyhose account. The meeting devolves into comments about Joan being “a work of art” and how she should be in the bra business. Rattled tensions between Joan and Peggy come right back to the forefront. Peggy snipes at Joan about her wealth and the way she’s dressed (both references to how she earned her place). Joan hits Peggy back about her looks.

In the show’s first episode, Joan instructs Peggy to make her “cute little ankles sing.” She tells her she can get ahead with a few right moves. “Ahead” is a home in the country where she need not come into work. The two women have achieved more and can aspire to more than they could have imagined in 1960. Yet, they are still trapped trying to manipulate men by being a deferential waitress/mother/something else.

That said, Peggy now has male underlings who respect her for being “fearless.” That is also a selling point on a successful first date, which Peggy old-fashionedly ends without sex. Far more romantic than “old-fashioned” Peggy letting Pete in after he shows up drunk on her doorstep in the middle of the night in the first episode. Notably, Peggy is receiving the aspirin, rather than bringing it Don.

Don is alone, his major existential crisis intact. He plays a watered-down Don Draper for appearances. He attempts to fill the void with sex, whether that’s a phoned-in flight attendant or a waitress in a restaurant’s back alley. He has a freaking answering service for that purpose. 1960 Don frets, paranoid that any slip up will expose his web of lies. 1970 Don has had everything come apart, yet his life has still held together. He’s cashed in, checked out and crossed over to the Roger side of the agency…and life.

He discovers that Rachel Katz has died of Leukemia. Don knew her as Rachel Menken of Menken’s department store, his paramour from the first season. She cut through his act from the beginning, understood him and could stand up to him. She was everything he was looking for previously and could not find afterward. He didn’t run off with her then. She’s gone. She found some of the fulfillment he never did without him.

Kenny Cosgrove gets let go to please McCann. This is after he gave up his writing career (and lost a functional eye) out of loyalty to the company. Ken’ wife is well off. He can live happily with her, move to a farm, write and tap maple trees to his heart’s content. Living his dream scares him more than living his reality. He takes a position at Dow Chemical, just to torment Roger and Pete.

In 1960, Sterling Cooper believes America will stay the course with a President Nixon. In 1970, America is staying the course with President Nixon. Cue the escalation of the hopeless Vietnam War into Cambodia.

* Not sure what was going on with Don thinking he recognized the waitress. She looks a bit like Midge from the first season. Maybe she’s supposed to look like Rachel? Sepinwall thinks it may be a sign of Don becoming unhinged.

* In 1970, Don knows what sitting shiva is from living in New York. In 1960, Sterling Cooper is clueless enough to serve shrimp cocktail to representatives from the Jewish department store. Interesting.

* Yes, Roger Sterling has a mustache.