WARNING: This blog is for people watching Mad Men Season 6 on Wednesdays on Sky Atlantic. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen it yet – may contain spoilers!
How “The Collaborators”? As everyone, presumably, I watch a Mad Men episode without knowing its title, and enjoy having my responses challenged and reactivated when I discover it later on. Some titles are pithy or merely descriptive: think of season 3’s “The Grown-Ups” (when JFK’s assassinated) and “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency” (one with the lawnmower, also an homage to The Sopranos). Other titles feel essential, gesturing at or building allegories within the episode (take “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, after the infamous Japanese culture study, that cleverly weaves the Honda clients’ storyline to Sally’s chastisement at being caught masturbating; or “Lady Lazarus” with its haunting symbols of suicide). Naming in Mad Men is purposeful and sophisticated.
So why, why “The Collaborators”? Unless it refers to a minor remark that alludes me, the title has to be ironic. What decent behaviour other than Bob Benson buying Pete’s toilet roll? Campbell will need it in his dour city apartment now that he’s banned from relieving himself within 50 miles of Trudy for “throwing in a hotdog” to the neighbour’s wife. Trudy’s assertion that he leave – she’s proud and controlled – is thrilling, really the highlight of the episode. Who ever expected the lines “I refuse to be a failure . . . I will destroy you” as Trudy Campbell’s?
There’s more rhetoric of combat, with genuine television and radio reports from Korea (of the Pueblo incident) and Vietnam (Tet Offensive) playing out like background music. Peggy’s friendship with Stan, their delightful phone banter, has been a minor joy of the new season – and seems doomed already. “He’s the enemy … This is how wars are won,” raves Ted over the potential keptchup account. A coming battle over the Coca Cola of condiments between SCDP and CGC – Don and Peggy at the creative helms – is an obvious call. Though how to top the bean ballet?
Other moves towards collaboration and shared confidences are grossly undermined. Devastated, Megan tells Sylvia how she has suffered a miscarriage. But her husband’s mistress has stunted empathy and Mrs Rosen, also brought up Catholic, understands only so much of her guilt. She is, after all, receiving “cookie jar” money from Don; a seemingly inessential detail in the arc of their story. The detail signifies more, though: prostitution, as plainly elsewhere in the episode Joan encounters Herb Rennet (whom she sold herself to) and in a series of flashbacks young Dick Whitman arrives at a whorehouse and pretends to drop pennies so to watch Uncle Mack “help all the hens”.
Unable to enter his apartment and slumped on the floor, Don appears deeply troubled by his new/old gigolo role. Like the Germans in Munich he gets everything he wants and still isn’t satisfied, he still wants more. And we know how the war ends.
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