Mad Men S7E11 - Time And Life

It has been said that you can never be too rich or too thin and that those who would tell you otherwise have never been poor or fat. Money can solve many problems, but as what appear to be charter members of the "most unhappy millionaires club," Roger, Don, Joan, Pete, and Ted discover that money does not hold all the answers either. 

After beginning the show's final "half" season mining the seemingly bottomless pit of Don's despair, of closing the loop on the (second) Draper marriage, Glen Bishop's whereabouts, and the demise of Rachel Menken, Time & Life was an episode about a story now thrice told. The set-up was familiar to any long-time viewer of the show. Just as SC&P was about to be absorbed into McCann (so much for independent subsidiaries), our intrepid group (which now includes Ted, but not Jim Cutler, who, Roger confirms, took the money and ran) tried to pull another stunt where they snatch their freedom away from the impending "tragedy" of working in a corporate monolith with such blue clip clients as Buick, Nabisco, and Coca-Cola. 

If this all seems like so much deja vu it is not. The same Scooby squad that alit from Sterling Cooper in 1963 to avoid McCann's clutches [1] ran into their arms six years later to avoid having the firm broken apart [2]. In the balance, a merger between SCDP and CGC occurred to secure Chevrolet. [3] The only difference is that the shotgun marriage Roger brokered in 1969 left the team with millions in profit, but with the misguided belief that they would be left to do their work, shielded by the conflicts that would have McCann giving up millions if they ever folded SC&P under the corporate banner. 

But as they say, history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. While SCDP successfully launched, the merger it swung to land a major car account ended with two partners deceased and the firm itself torn apart by its partners. This caper falls flat, not just because the newly ensconced head of advertising (some guy named Ken Cosgrove) at Dow Chemical tells Roger and Pete to fuck off, or that Pete thinks he's saved the day by securing trusty old Seacor Laxatives, but because McCann bigwig Jim Hobart tells the group the their attempt to cherry pick conflicted clients to maintain a small outpost in California was a waste of time. It turns out the initial post-acquisition freedom he offered them was simply a tryout to make sure he was getting what he paid for. Once done, the SC&P team would be brought in house and offered the largest accounts in the world - acknowledgement of the group's excellence and skill.  

But even as their professional walls are crumbling, Roger, Joan, and Ted are all able to find succor in the arms of loved ones. Ted, decades before Facebook exists, manages to reconnect with an old flame after his own marriage dissolved in the California heat (another plot line closed). Joan has the gallant Richard swooping in on the red eye from California to comfort her. Roger has Marie Calvet, recently separated from her Canadian husband. Indeed, the writers offered a subtle wink to long-time viewers. As the wake for SC&P broke up, it was left to Roger and Don to close down the bar. Here, as they did years ago after bidding Freddy Rumsen "fare thee well" [4] there is much discussion about love and loss, but instead of Don telling Roger about moving forward in life, Roger needs no lesson. He has (for now) found happiness, leaving Don scrambling back to the dumpy apartment building where he left Diana, only to find she has disappeared without a trace. 

Even Pete has the opportunity for a small grace note. When he and Trudy's daughter Tammy is denied entry into an elite school, he pops the schoolmaster in the mouth after the man speaks ill of the Campbell family name. Later, at their former marital home in Cos Cob, he tries to lift Trudy's spirits about her own plight, which, for now, has to do with fending off married men in the suburbs but later, she fears, will involve being alone and unappealing. While it is hard to believe these are the seeds for marital reconciliation, at least Pete was able to feel like he had a connection with someone and for a reason he thought important. Not so for Don. His after hours messaging service may still offer temporary comfort, he is a man without a home and no long-term plan. 

Meanwhile, a click below on the corporate food chain, Peggy and Stan struggle to cast a child to act in one of their advertisements. Here, we see a continuation of a conversation these two "work spouses" have been having for some time now - about the workplace and a woman's role in it and careers and love and all of the things that we fill the intimate space in our lives with those we care about and cherish. Once upon a time, as Peggy made her way at CGC, she and Stan would talk late at night as each toiled in their respective offices, [5] but now, their conversations are more pointed and direct. Stan's observation that Peggy does not like kids hits a little too close to home and in the middle of an extended back and forth about what sacrifices a woman needs to make in the workplace of the 1960s/70s, that having children would have precluded Peggy from attaining the position she has secured, she reveals to Stan the fact that she gave away a child, but even in that confidence, she slightly pulls her punch - not revealing that Pete is the father [6]. 

Every point Peggy made hit home and in that scene, you felt the weight of her choices, of the frustrations she inevitably feels that sometimes leave her crumpled on the floor in tears [7] and at other times, lashing out at underlings [8]. That Peggy Olson has succeeded without an Ivy League degree is acknowledged by the headhunter she hires to help her find other jobs as the reality of the pending McCann move sinks in, but that does not give her a free pass to pay her corporate dues, as he counsels her to suck it up for a few years at McCann before moving on to other opportunities lest she take a less prominent position for less pay elsewhere. 

But Peggy has long been on the outside looking in at what others have. Whether it was observing long ago how much material wealth Don had accumulated [9] or spitting venom at Ted about the luxury he had of making choices [10] when he broke off their affair (and broke her heart), Peggy is constantly chasing both career and personal happiness but rarely finding either one. Working with children simply underscores the weight of the decision she made to give up her child long ago and dismissing Joan's complaints about the workplace is just a reminder that for all of Peggy's talent, she is still just an employee without the "fuck you" money that would allow her to tell off people who bother her. 

In the end, her kindred spirit is that enigmatic man in the corner office. While Roger, Joan, Ted, and possibly Pete are at least able to have some happiness in their personal lives, neither Peggy or Don seem to have such luck. If the show's climatic ending was teed up by last night's episode - that the clock is ticking on Don in two ways - with SC&P's pending absorption into McCann and his need to move out of the Park Avenue penthouse he has called home, both things conveniently occurring at the "end of the month" (based on Don's tan suit, one can assume it is a summer month) the references to California were perhaps not coincidental. Ted is right, Don has always had a special fondness for California. Whether it is because he associates it with his life after the war, when he was making due selling used cars and the foundation of his relationship with Anna Draper was built [11], or the visits he made to escape the mess he inevitably left behind in New York [12], and the beginning of his relationship with Megan, [13] the idealized version of California holds great appeal to Don; however, the reality of it was polluted by his failed attempt at a bicoastal marriage to Megan, who walked off with one million of his dollars. 

Of course, this is of a piece with the rest of Don's life. He likes "the beginnings of things" [14] but rarely has the patience (or interest) in sticking around to see things to the end. For a man who has made a lifetime out of reinvention, Don's final Houdini act should be interesting.

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END NOTES

1. Shut The Door, Have A Seat, Season 3, Episode 13. 

2. Waterloo, Season 7, Episode 7.

3. For Immediate Release, Season 6, Episode 6. 

4. Six Month Leave, Season 2, Episode 9. 

5. The Collaborators, Season 6, Episode 3. 

6. Meditations In An Emergency, Season 2, Episode 13. It is also worth noting that Peggy infers she gave her son up for adoption; however, the last we heard or saw of him, he was being raised by Peggy's sister. Three Sundays, Season 2, Episode 4. 

7. Time Zones, Season 7, Episode 1. 

8. A Day's Work, Season 7, Episode 2. 

9. The Fog, Season 3, Episode 5. 

10. In Care Of, Season 6, Episode 13. 

11. The Gold Violin, Season 2, Episode 7.

12. The Mountain King, Season 2, Episode 12, The Good News, Season 4, Episode 3. 

13. Tomorrowland, Season 4, Episode 13. 

14. ibid.

Book Review - America's Bitter Pill

More than three hundred pages into Steven Brill's deeply sourced and wonderfully written book America's Bitter Pill, about the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, he elliptically touches on the central frustration many of us who believe in universal health care as a right and not a privilege had about the ACA. As the countdown to the launch of healthcare.gov draws near, the bureaucrats and government officials note the irony of the avalanche of criticism and scare tactics utilized by Republicans against a law that was based on an idea hatched at the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and implemented in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney. After all, the simpler fix, converting our entire health care system into a single payer model instead of maintaining the bifurcated system where some people receive "government health care" (the elderly, disabled, poor, and military/veterans) while the rest of us are left to the predations of the private market, was never more than a pipe dream. Instead, a Democratic President and Democratic Congress passed a Republican health care proposal and then got the shit kicked out of them by those same Republicans for doing it. 

Brill manages to balance the tick-tock of how the ACA was passed into law with the real world consequences of the inequities of our health care system. The book is itself a longer form meditation on a piece Brill did for TIME that focused on the vagaries of cost in our system - that obscure hospital administrators called "charge masters" can bill one amount for say, a CT scan if you are insured by Medicare, but an entirely different amount if you have private insurance or none at all. Other, even less savory elements of the pre-ACA world, of debt collectors who harass people after costly treatment is rendered but goes unpaid and consultants who literally require a credit card payment before you are treated in an emergency room, reinforced the predatory conduct against people at their most vulnerable. 

Brill's story introduces us to some unsung heroes, people like Liz Fowler, a senior staffer for Senator Max Baucus, who works tirelessly to get the ACA passed only to see her name dragged through the mud when she eventually leaves government to take a lucrative job at Johnson and Johnson; and other, less heroic profiles of people like Jeanne Lambrew and Nancy-Ann DeParle, senior staffers at HHS and the White House who seem more interested in winning bureaucratic turf fights than focusing on the nitty gritty of implementing the myriad regulations, rules, and yes, the website, that would form the backbone of the ACA. 

Along the way, Brill debunks a few Republican (and media) talking points - to wit, he reports that President Obama had eight one-on-one meetings with Senator Olympia Snowe in the lead-up to Senate votes on the ACA (media myth - Obama needs to reach out to Republicans more) and that more than 140 Republican amendments were ultimately included in the final bill (GOP talking point - the ACA was negotiated in private and "rammed through" Congress). He also levels fair criticism at the Obama team for its sometimes tin ear to the politics of the ACA  - not emphasizing the low cost of many plans after subsidies were included - and the poor management of the healthcare.gov website. On the other hand, Brill highlights the largely below-the-radar screen effort in blood red Kentucky to launch kynect, the state-run health care exchange and to gladly accept the Medicaid expansion offered under the ACA that, combined, allowed the state to significantly reduce the number of its uninsured and save the state hundreds of millions of dollars in the long run. 

Indeed, it is one of the central paradoxes of not just Brill's book, but the overall Republican reaction to the ACA, as to why an initiative that largely relied on the private sector for its success and would save states billions in health care costs was so widely reviled. Then-Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota issued an executive order prohibiting any state agency from working with the federal government on the ACA and when Brill called one of Senator Ted Cruz's offices in Texas asking for information about the ACA, the staffer who took his call bluntly told Brill no assistance was forthcoming and he should contact HHS directly. These are just the one-off examples. The years-long litigation that resulted in the Supreme Court's ruling that upheld the ACA and follow-along lawsuits about contraception coverage and whether subsidies are available to those who got their coverage via the federal exchange instead of a state-run exchange are just so much clogging of the system and draining of resources that would have otherwise been dedicated to implementation of the law. The question of why so many were so opposed to people having access to health coverage is left largely unanswered. 

Brill also points out that the health care industry, in the main, has significantly profited from the Affordable Care Act. Health stocks have gone through the roof since the ACA was enacted and because lobbyists aggressively fought for tweaks in the law and the subsequent HHS regulations, their bottom lines have been largely protected with the added benefit of having millions of new customers who must now purchase insurance or face a tax penalty. Indeed, the sacrifice of cost controls at the altar of expanding coverage is the most significant flaw Brill identifies in the ACA. 

That costs, and estimates of future costs, have gone down more than the initial CBO estimate is simply a happy coincidence. On the other hand, he points to the hue and cry over a small tax on medical device makers as one of the great inequities of the ACA debate. That industry's profit margins are particularly high, yet the modest tax levied on those devices is inevitably raised as a target for repeal. The pharmaceutical industry, which already received protection from cost controls when Medicare Part D was passed, successfully protected its members (and their profits) by agreeing to offset some costs under the ACA while receiving gifts like extended patent protection for biologic products. 

It is these back room deal and lobbying efforts that Brill points to as eroding the value of the ACA. Another example is the so-called Medicare "doc fix," which was kept out of the ACA for fear it would negatively impact the law's overall impact on the budget (Democrats were fixated on getting the CBO to "score" the ACA as saving the government money at best or revenue neutral at worst) but passed without much fanfare just a few weeks ago while adding at least $141 billion to the long-term deficit. Was this idea horrible five years ago and suddenly great in 2015? Of course not. The only difference was in which party controlled Congress. Rest assured that had Democrats attempted to slip the "doc fix" into the ACA, Republicans would have howled in anger. Now that they are in control, Republicans can blithely add this bill to the government's credit card and not fear any political reprisal. 

Of course, the dirty little secret of the Affordable Care Act is that with all its complexity, the lockstep Republican opposition, and some of its stumbles, the law has been an enormous success, you just would never know it because the media only took the time to report on its missteps, not its triumphs. Perhaps no clearer example of this is the healthcare.gov website. While there is no question the development and roll-out were done poorly, the problems were entirely resolved within a few weeks. Indeed, the heroic work of a team of coders Brill discusses would be worthy of its own book. The only difference is that while the media provided wall-to-wall coverage of the failings, they largely shrugged their shoulders once the problem was fixed and millions of people successfully accessed the site to get covered. 

And that is truly too bad, because the story of the ACA's success deserves to be told. To Brill's credit, he does attempt to highlight some of the real world consequences for people like Tommy and Viola Brown, a Kentucky couple in their early 60s who live in a county that went for Romney over Obama 2:1 and who had a litany of illnesses (she is a diabetic, he had an untreated broken neck and 2 bouts with cancer!) and could not afford health insurance before the ACA, get it under the Medicaid expansion - a literal life saver. On the other end of the spectrum, Brill mentions Sean and Stephanie Recchi, small business owners who are struggling because of the cost of treating Sean's cancer, but skeptical that Obamacare can help them (spoiler alert - it does) because of all the negative things they heard about the law on TV.

Where Brill falls short is in the final section of the book, where he proposes to turn over the entire health care industry to oligopolies of hospitals cum insurance companies. The idea would make health care single payer to a large degree, except the payee would be a government approved oligopoly restrained (to some degree) by regulations like profit margin (limited to 8% annually) and strict billing oversight. Brill points to places like New York and Pittsburgh as cities where what he proposes is, to a certain degree, already happening, but it is unclear if his model would play as well in Peoria or other, more rural parts of the country that do not have ready access to world-leading medical care facilities. Why not just go single payer? Medicare is a low-overhead (3%, as compared to 25-30% in the private sector) insurance product that is able to significantly bargain down the exorbitant prices charged in the health care system and is incredibly popular. Plus, we already pay into it through our paychecks and would streamline what is a too complicated system. 

It is not surprising that the advocates of the law had difficulty "selling" it to the public - the primary beneficiaries of the ACA, those around the poverty line, and the random assortment of part-time workers, employees at companies where health care was not offered, and those denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, are not a vocal or powerful voting bloc. They have no lobbyists trolling the halls of Congress to insert language into legislation that will save them millions in taxes or secure their financial bottom lines, but they are our fellow Americans and did not deserve to experience financial ruin or a preventable death because our health care system is ridiculous. 

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Mad Men S7E10 - The Forecast

"It can be greeted with terror or joy, a tantrum that says 'I want it the way it was,' or a dance that says, 'Look, something new!'" - Don Draper, on "the future." Love Among The Ruins (S3E2)  

For someone who has become a millionaire several times over by selling aspiration to the masses, when Don Draper is handed what you would think is a paint-by-numbers assignment by Roger Sterling to write a speech articulating his view for the future of the company, Don hits a dry well. Ted's big hope is to land a pharmaceutical account and Peggy aspires to Don's seat as Creative Director (a point that has him sit up a little higher in his chair with pride), but when he glibly dismisses Peggy's desire to leave behind something of value, she writes the entire conversation off as one of his sour moods, a bait and switch where she exposes herself and he pockets that information without reciprocating.

The Forecast, the tenth episode of Mad Men's seventh season, differs from the prior two episodes, which had an ethereal, almost dream-like aspect to them. Don's fast, but odd "relationship" with Diana (the Sad Waitress) could have easily led to Internet speculation that this whole half-season occurred as a hallucination, or a vision Don has just as he is about to leave this Earth. But in The Forecast Don's feet are more firmly placed on the ground if his heart and soul are not entirely there. 

In keeping with his theme of reinvention, a million dollar check will not suffice to reboot Don Draper 3.0 (or is it 4.0? At this point, most of us have lost count), he must also unload the penthouse apartment he and Megan moved into when they married. Of course, he can't be bothered with details like having the carpets cleaned or staging the massive family room with anything but the deck furniture. For someone in advertising, he is more than happy to critique the poor sales job of his real estate agent, but his half-assed effort to sell his apartment is on par with the just-enough time he spent with his sons blending milkshakes, sticking around just long enough for other people to finish the job. 

When it comes to things Don does care about, he is a little more assertive. His attempt to mentor Mathis ends poorly, with the young man misreading the room both in apologizing for an outburst to a client and in confronting Don for the failure. On his way out the door after being fired, Mathis kicks Don in the shins, dismissing an old war story about Don resuscitating himself before Lucky Strike as nothing so much as revisionist history, his presence with the closeted executive Lee Garner a product of his looks, not his acumen. It is not surprising that Don is not well-suited to mentorship. Like a great athlete who is easily frustrated by coaching lesser talent, the fairy dust Don sprinkles on clients can only be appreciated by wunderkinds like Peggy, not run-of-the-mill types like Mathis.

That Mathis is even given any airtime is of a piece with the rest of the half-season's motif of providing what seems like a disproportionate amount of time to bit players and long ago characters. This week, Glen Bishop reappears to let pen-pal Sally know he's shipping off to Vietnam, but it is only when he returns to the Francis mansion once she's gone that he discloses to Betty that his enlistment is a way to cover up his flunking out from school and, in the balance, getting the respect of his step-father. It is a sad little storyline. When Glen notes that Betty looks the same, he accidentally stumbles on a larger truth. What he probably meant as an offhanded compliment is literally true. If you last saw Betty Draper in Ossining in 1963 and then ran into her as Betty Francis in Rye in 1970, it would appear as if time stood still. Her future, which she pins on returning to school, may or may not occur, but an entire decade has passed her by. 

Meanwhile, Lou Avery is still around (who knew?) darkening the sunshine of SC&P's West Coast office while Joan meets a mystery man during a visit to the company's left coast outpost. Richard is a wealthy, older man with a recent divorce under his belt and his children have been raised and are on their own. Joan shades the truth during their brief tryst assuming she will never see him again, but when he pursues her to New York, she comes clean, which does not sit well with him (his wide lapels didn't sit well with me, but that's another story). Ultimately, Richard expresses interest in being in Joan's life, even with a child (and a live-in mother, not to mention a groovy babysitter) in tow. 

But like Diana, Richard's introduction is a bit of a head scratcher. I mean, if Joan wanted to shack up with a rich older man who was going to pay lip service to his willingness to be in a small child's life, the boy's actual father is working down the hall from her. And as viewers, what are we to make of the steady stream of new plot lines even as the sands in the show's hourglass continue to dwindle? If this entire half-season is a sort of coda for the show, with Waterloo its actual ending - of the partners getting filthy rich and the entire crew falling under the McCann banner - that is fine so far as it goes, but I would have hoped for either a more concentrated story line (Pete has barely been present this season even though he is one of the "core four" from the firm) or something completely out of the box, like an entire half-season of flash forwards to random years that closed each character's loop. 

Ultimately, for a guy who, when we met him, told Rachel Menken that love was something created by guys like him to sell nylons, as Don has aged, the future does not look like something to be greeted with hope and excitement. While Don is temporarily uplifted by Sally's friends, who have a powwow over Chinese food about their hopes and dreams, she has one "fast" friend, who clumsily flirts with Don and embarrasses Sally. Sally lashes out at Don as she boards a Greyhound bus, thinking he was tempted by her seventeen-year old friend, but she misread the situation. It is no matter, it is understandable that Sally wants to get as far away from her parents as possible. She has seen and heard them do awful things and has not received what anyone would consider strong parenting. If she had any doubt, Don's tepid wave as she boards the bus and the fact he does not even stick around to watch it pull out of the terminal pretty much confirms her entire critique. 

Meanwhile, the episode ends on another forlorn image of Don. The penthouse apartment he was so eager to dump has been sold and he has thirty days to clear out and figure our what his future holds. Given that time and the place he is in his life, is not a comforting thought.

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Spring In Princeton

The weather in New Jersey was perfect this weekend. Saturday was sunny and close to 80 degrees. Sunday was sunny, but cooler, about 65 degrees. It was a great opportunity to get out and explore the world after such a wretched winter. 

Saturday

I took a nice walk along the D&R Canal with one of my friends who had spied a bald eagle earlier in the week. Sure enough, we spotted him/her in an aerie at least 100 feet in the air, but thanks to my 50x zoom lens, I was able to get a couple of great shots. 

Along the way, we also saw turtles basking in the warm sunshine.

Sunday

Sunday morning, I decided to cruise by Princeton (Borough) Hall, where there is a large statue of George Washington. It's as big as day and with the cherry blossoms in bloom, looked really nice. Along with the statue is a stunning weeping willow (also in bloom). The last photo shows each in relation to the other. 

My final stop was, naturally, Prospect House. I needed to see if any flowers had bloomed and sure enough, there were some daffodils and tulips in fine form. The last photo is of a magnolia tree on the Prospect House grounds. 

All in all, a great weekend and a great way to start what I hope will be a full season's worth of amazing photography. 

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Mad Men S7E9 - New Business

"You people think money solves every problem."

"No, just this particular problem."

Gene Hofstadt and Don Draper, My Old Kentucky Home (Season 3, Episode 3)

Don Draper has never been bashful about using money to solve problems (or remind his underlings that it is their reward for hard work, as opposed to say, praise) but going from slipping his father-in-law a few bucks when his five-dollar bill goes missing to cutting his ex-wife a one million dollar check is a different story altogether.

New Business is an ironic title for the ninth episode of Mad Men's seventh season, because it had a much stronger feel of tying up loose ends. It turns out Arnold and Sylvia Rosen do still live in Don's building and have observed the rotating cast of characters Don has been bringing up to his penthouse apartment. Megan and Don's marriage, which appeared to sputter to an end during the first "half" of this season was made official with that aforementioned seven figure send-off. The petty backbiting at the attorney's office and Marie's own decision to extract a pound of flesh (if not a lot of Don's swanky furniture) notwithstanding, that type of behavior is standard fair in an acrimonious divorce. Of course, when you can blithely write such a large check, perhaps it is unnecessary to do any navel gazing or score any cheap points on the way out the door.

None of this reflected Megan in a particularly good light. We all know Harry is an odious troll who preys on young actresses, so his clumsy attempt to bed the now available Ms. Calvet was unsurprising, but here, Roger had it right when he recalled the acrimony of his divorce from a much younger woman who claimed he had stolen her best years even as she milked him for a new apartment. [1] The smug attitude Megan took with her sister after receiving her payout told you everything you needed to know. In a moral universe, is this justice? Who knows, but in love and war, things are rarely clean cut.

Having disposed of that particular problem, Don was free to focus on his new lady friend, Diana. Introduced as a possible Rachel Menken doppelgänger, it turns out she's a runaway from another life of suburban domesticity interrupted by the tragedy of the loss of a child. Don has been filling his mommy void with a steady stream of brunettes for the entire time we've "known" him, but there's a pathos to Diana that is particularly acute. Perhaps it is Don's own backstory of reinvention that piques his interest, or his knowledge that you cannot allow your past to define you, but there is something almost paternal in his attitude toward the younger woman. He gifts her a guidebook to New York City, but she can only look as far as the doorway to her one room apartment and the bottle of vodka she is using to drown her past. 

In this otherwise Don-centric episode, there was a quirky little B story between Peggy and Stan. These two, whose work relationship began so unpleasantly, are now what we today consider "work spouses" - good friends who know each other well and share intimacy, just not of the physical variety. [2] Here, they are more competitors than collaborators when a hip commercial director named Pima Ryan hits the scene, she stirs Stan's dormant interest in his own art outside of work (photography) and creates tension with Peggy over what images best catch the camera's eye. While Peggy rebuffs her advances [3] Stan give in to them, lording his prowess over the copy chief until she mentions that she too was the target of Pima's interest. 

But as the clock ticks down to the end of the show's run, through two episodes the dominant theme, other than each character's emotional struggle, is a sort of box checking - what happened to Rachel Menken? (died of leukemia). Kenny Cosgrove? (in house at Dow Chemical). Are the Rosen's still around? (yes). Megan? (filthy rich and never to be heard from again). Don's sudden interest in a diner waitress may be because he views her as a kindred spirit or just simply someone who will be nice enough to show up at his apartment at 3 a.m. to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, but much of his interaction with Diana is backward looking - explaining the number of coats in the closet or the length of time he has been separated. There is nothing "new" in this, or in his "type," the question, one supposes is whether this is just history repeating itself well past tragedy or farce.

PS - Betty as a psychologist is just exactly perfect.

END NOTES

1. Unlike Roger, who then defiled that apartment by having sex with Jane in it, one assumes Don won't be flying out to California any time soon. Dark Shadows, Season 5, Episode 9. 

2. This did not stop Stan from trying to make a play for Peggy while he was under the effects of the "Dr. Feelgood" B12 shot provided by Jim Cutler's doctor. The Crash, Season 6, Episode 8. 

3. A skill she initially cultivated with another photographer, Joyce, some years ago. The Rejected, Season 4, Episode 4. 

Mad Men S7E8 - Severance

More than anything, the barometer of Mad Men is gauged by where Don Draper is on the spectrum between riding high and scraping the bottom of the barrel. In the wake of SC&P's acquisition by McCann, Don and Roger are flush with cash (and in Roger's case, some newly acquired, and unfortunate facial hair) and behaving badly. The Don we meet in Severance is safely ensconced back in his familiar corner office and cycling through women in a manner unseen since Betty kicked him to the curb at the end of Season 3. [1]

Money and the past are recurring themes throughout Severance. For those who got rich in the acquisition and those counting the money of those who got rich, money does not appear to be making anyone particularly happy. Roger is dismissive of a waitress at a coffee shop but attempts to make amends by leaving her a $100 bill on an $11 check. When Don returns to the same diner, she assumes it is to get his "money's worth" and they have an a quickie in the alley. She thinks it is one thing, he is so accustomed to women throwing themselves at him, he misses the connection and by the end of the episode, just wants to sit at the counter and mope. 

Pete has what we now term "first world problems" as he scurries to hide his fortune from the government, a problem for which Ken feels little sympathy. Joan is still dismissed as a sexpot by the middle managers at McCann, who demean and belittle her as she and Peggy try to bridge a gap for the little account that could - Topaz - which is having its lunch eaten by L'eggs. [2] But Peggy's tolerance for Joan's disgust is limited. Not only did Peggy try to deftly parry the slimy commentary of their McCann peers, but she did not become a millionaire when SC&P was acquired, so she dismisses Joan's carping by observing that Joan does not even need to do the work because of the great fortune she received when SC&P was acquired. [3] 

Meanwhile, the past continues to haunt Don. More than using the company message service as his own private after-hours hook-up line, there is a subtle wink to Don's past in Severance, the main client is a fur company, a sales job from which Roger "discovered" Don nearly two decades before. [4] We also hear a name (and see a face) long forgotten - Rachel (Menken) Katz [5]. Way back in 1960, Don and Rachel carried on a furtive (and ultimately futile) affair that started with his swaggering proclamation that love was created by ad men like him and her distaste for his arrogance and ignorance that somehow melted into passion that curdled when Don's past was discovered by Pete and he wanted to run away with her to Los Angeles. [6]

Don has a dream that he sees her, only to discover that she has recently passed away. When he appears at the shiva he is snubbed by her surviving sister Barbara, whose long memory is triggered as soon as she greets him and hears his name. [7] There is much to be said for Don's tortured experiences with death [8] but the not-so-subtle twist of the knife given by Rachel's sister, asking after Don's family, telling him that Rachel had everything she wanted in the world, and questioning his presence there, chip away at Don, who visibly sags as he acknowledges his two divorces, hands over the cake he has brought to the mourning, and looks balefully on as the men begin prayer services. 

This second-half opener gives Peggy an opportunity to dip a toe in the dating waters, getting overly tipsy with Mathis's brother-in-law and, in the cold light of the morning following drunken plans for a trip to Paris, feels slightly regretful of her conduct. As for Ken, he both gets and gives the shaft - first, as he's let go for some long ago offense his first time around at McCann and then turning the tables by securing employment in house at Dow Chemical, and instead of firing the firm, he decides instead to be a thorn in their side as an overly demanding client. 

As is typical of Matthew Weiner, who wrote the seventh season's eighth episode, a lot of chum was sprinkled in the water without providing a clear direction for these final shows. Having skipped past the joy of Woodstock and the horror of Altamont and moved the narrative into the early months of 1970, [9] Weiner took a pass at certain social commentary. Ken's firing aside, there were few fireworks, but more a sense of reorienting the audience to the new normal - no Jim Cutler (no loss there), Ted and Roger's porn star quality mustaches, Joan drowning her frustrations at being an account woman in high end spending, and Don on a mostly upswing - if you ignore the quickie in the alley with the waitress, his return to the bottle, haunted expression over a love lost, and apparent interest in marking more notches on his bedpost. 

What did you think? 

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END NOTES

1. See, e.g., Christmas Comes But Once A Year, Season 4, Episode 2, Waldorf Stories, Season 4 Episode 6. 

2. As Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce teetered on the brink, Peggy and Ken brought in Topaz Pantyhose. Tomorrowland, Season 4, Episode 13.

3. In inflation adjusted dollars, Joan's $1.5 million stake is worth somewhere between $10-15 million in today's dollars.

4. Waldorf Stories, supra. See also, Field Trip, Season 7, Episode 3. 

5. We last saw Rachel with new husband Tilden Katz in The New Girl, Season 2, Episode 5. 

6. See, e.g., Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Season 1, Episode 1, Babylon, Season 1, Episode 6, Nixon v. Kennedy, Season 1, Episode 12. 

7. Babylon, supra. 

8. Don has a vision of his half-brother Adam while under anesthesia, The Shadow, Season 5, Episode 13, of Anna Draper in his office, The Suitcase, Season 4, Episode 7, and Bert Cooper doing a soft shoe, Waterloo, Season 7, Episode 7. 

9. The speech given by President Nixon shown during the episode occurred on April 30, 1970. http://time.com/3760142/mad-men-nixon-speech/

Girls Season Four

With each passing season, the phenomenon that was once Girls continues to wane. The show wrapped its fourth season last night with an ending akin to that of The Wizard of Oz. You see, much like Dorothy finding out she had the power to go home all the time, the "girls" merely needed to be exposed to pure, distilled "adulthood" to grow up - child birth made Jessa realize she wants to be a therapist and Hannah to move past Adam; Shoshana got a Yoda-like lecture from Hermie  and decided to embark on a career in Japan and Marnie just needed a pep talk from newly minted Neighborhood Board Chairman Ray Ploshansky to nail a coffee house tryout.  

The season finale nicely exposed much of what was wrong with the season as a whole. Too much plot crammed into too little time. Nowhere was this more true than with Lena Dunham's alter ego and titular main character Hannah Horvath. After pulling a particularly selfish stunt by letting Adam know that she had been admitted to the Iowa Writer's Workshop on the night of his Broadway premiere, the couple has an uneasy denouement (and unspoken "we're on a break" agreement) when Hannah makes her way to the prairie in the season's second episode. Instead of keeping Hannah in Iowa for the season to explore how couples handle long-distance relationships or let her stretch her literary wings (after all, she was supposed to be a voice of her generation) before a season ending "should I stay or should I go" conundrum, Hannah flames out spectacularly. Her fellow graduate students have no patience for her childish behavior and know-it-all attitude much less her actual writing, which they quickly peg as superficial and self-centered. 

That she folds her tent so quickly was particularly curious considering how much time had been spent during the prior three seasons getting us invested in the idea that Hannah was determined to be a writer - from burning bridges at her advertorial job at GQ to doing coke for a freelance website gig - suddenly, being bullied by snobby graduate students snuffed out her dream? When she gets back to find Adam has shacked up with a new woman (an excellent Gillian Jacobs as a pretentious artist named Mimi-Rose) it feels like, as Adam would say, another step in a series of random steps. 

Hannah spirals further when she meets Fran, a single teacher at the school she magically gets a substitute teaching job at and takes him to one of Mimi-Rose's art exhibits on their first date. She also befriends one of her teen students, Cleo, who she goes to get matching piercings with (bailing when the younger girl screams in horror as a needle is shoved through the underside of her tongue) and then berates when Cleo doesn't return Hannah's ten texts and three calls (!) after Tad comes out of the closet. Perhaps it is because Hannah talked Cleo into getting the underside of her tongue pierced that the teen snubs her, but the total lack of appropriateness and idea that you would rely on an adolescent for emotional support (and then have a tantrum when she does not) made me roll my eyes so hard I think I gave myself a concussion. 

Marnie is no better. Her relationship with pretty boy hipster Desi is volatile, beginning with her as the "other woman" whom Desi basically sells on the idea of his not being into traditional relationships, but somehow ends with a marriage proposal after he blows their $2,000 advance on some guitar equipment. Huh? Of course, she ignores the advice of the one person who actually does act like an adult - Ray - when he tells her that Desi is selfish and unworthy of her and it is ultimately left to Ray to dress down Desi so thoroughly (it really is one of the show's great scenes) that he no shows the coffee house gig a record executive  scheduled for him and Marnie.

Shoshana spends most of the season on a fruitless search for a job (perhaps a karmic comeuppance for being so incredibly rude to the one interviewer who did offer her gainful employment) before oddly shifting into a role as Ray's pseudo-campaign manager when the Grumpy's manager is left wanting at a neighborhood board meeting where his complaint about traffic on his street does not even make it onto the agenda. She also manages to insult another interviewer, Scott, but who ends up asking her out and offering her material comfort which she ultimately rejects in favor of a job in Tokyo offered to her during the season finale.  

Jessa and Adam gravitate toward each other in Hannah's absence and bond over AA, but Jessa is also typically Jessa - peeing on the street and then mouthing off to the cops who issue her a ticket, getting her and Adam arrested; setting up Adam with Mimi-Rose so she can get a crack at Ace (an also excellent Zachary Quinto), Mimi-Rose's ex, before the whole caper blows up spectacularly in Mimi-Rose's impossibly hip home when Ace and Jessa pop in unannounced and Jessa realizes she and Adam are simply pawns in the most narcissistic game of human chess ever played - she susses out that Mimi-Rose and Ace are heavyweight champions of self-absorption while she and Adam are rank amateurs.

But like a clever kid who skips showing her work and gets to the answer at the bottom of a math question, the show barely lingers on what would otherwise be major milestones in its characters development to get to some ending that seems satisfactory. Tad's coming out is played for some laughs but also humiliates him - he is just as emasculated by Lorraine post-coming out as he was pre, so did it really make a difference? Marnie goes from other woman to betrothed, steals Ray's thunder at his election night victory party, but then is able to perform flawlessly in her fiancé's absence when he bails on the most important performance of their nascent career. Even the coda to the finale, flashing forward six months (never mind the fact that the season presumably ends in November after Election Day, meaning NYC must have experienced a very rare May snowfall!) makes little sense. Fran had rightly pegged Hannah as self-involved and dramatic, yet somehow, by the magic touch of his hand on her back after she (dramatically) storms out of her class and her witnessing a child's birth, we are to assume that they are now a happy, stable couple tip toeing through the snowflakes. Ok. It is TV, so sure, why not.   

But the longer the narrative arc of the show becomes, the more its whole strains credulity. Or maybe it is that life just moves oh so fast when you are in the rarefied hipster air of Brooklyn, but having brushed over so many of the small things that happen in life to get to bigger themes and sources of discovery, the show misses a basic point: life rarely affords a simple montage or defining moment that moves you in a different direction, it comes from slow and steady work and effort to change and break bad habits and inculcate new and better ones. What was too often missing from this season's work was the showing of that work. If anything, much of the behavior and decision making regresses before the deus ex machina ending that propelled the characters forward. Convenient, but not very satisfying. 

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The Mad Men Death Pool

Death is as much a part of Mad Men as alcohol and infidelity. From Adam Whitman's suicide [1] to Bert Cooper's expiration as men landed on the moon [2], the show has not been bashful about sending characters to the great beyond. [3] As we round the corner and head for home with the final seven episodes beginning to air in three short weeks, let's take a minute and look at the Mad Men "Death Pool."

The Long-Shots

The Draper Children - Bobby and Gene (1000-1); Sally Draper (500-1): Sure, Bobby Draper has been played by multiple child actors and appears to eat up screen time for no other reason than to annoy us, but neither he nor younger brother Gene seem like obvious candidates for an untimely demise. Sally could get killed hitchhiking to Woodstock or Glen Bishop could turn out to be a murderous sociopath (though one would think Betty would be the target of his animus, not Sally), but short of that, I think she will live to experience (and surely roll her eyes at) the 1970s and the years of therapy she has ahead of her.

Harry Crane (250-1): Like cockroaches that will survive a nuclear holocaust, nothing seems to stop Harry Crane. Mergers and acquisitions, the birth of his children, seduction by a hare krishna harlot,  bingeing on hamburgers, and unfortunate sideburns, it all just rolls of Harry's back. 

Ken Cosgrove (250-1): Too anodyne to make waves for so long, when Ken briefly dipped his toe into the deeper waters of upper management, he ended up on the business end of some random GM executive's shotgun pellets. [4] Expect Ken to lay low, or better yet, hang up his spurs and become a full-time writer of weird science-fiction.

Ted Chaough (200-1): Way too nice to die young. 

Jim Cutler (175-1): Roger Sterling without the charm but also without the two prior heart attacks. 

Betty Draper Francis (150-1): Sure, her weight has yo-yo'd a bit of late and she smokes a lot, but life as a housewife has shielded Betty from some of the other obvious indicators of long-term health risk. She could go on another wild goose chase into a shady part of New York City [5] and end up losing more than the proprietary rights to her goulash recipe, but my guess is she is more likely to bury her second husband (more on that later).

Joan Holloway (150-1): Already dodged the greatest risk to an early death - being underneath lecherous Jaguar car dealer Herb Rennet. 

Cannot Be Ruled Out

Freddy Rumsen (125-1): Freddy is just the kind of mid-tier supporting player whose death could be used as an episode jolt.

Megan Draper (100-1): As much as people wanted to buy into the Megan-will-die-because-she-wore-a-Sharon-Tate-t-shirt, I don't see it happening. If she stays in La La Land, her more likely future is on the arm of some rich executive, not the victim of a ritual murder. 

Peggy Olson (80-1): Being a landlord and resident in one of New York's sketchier neighborhoods has not been without danger for Peggy, but it will likely be another few decades before her drinking, smoking, and high stress job catch up with her. 

The Contenders

Henry Francis (30-1): Killing off Henry would be a convenient way to put Betty and Don back together in middle-age, when, in theory, Don's wandering eye and marginal emotional growth might afford the couple a second chance. 

Don Draper (20-1): I have never subscribed to the theory that the show's opening credits are a foreshadowing of Don's suicide. That said, he has not been above allusions to death [6] and carries the guilt of two dead bodies on his conscience [7], but I am sticking to my belief that the credits speak to Don's uncanny ability to pull himself out of the fire in the moment before he is going to splatter all over the sidewalk and appear unperturbed, not a hair out of place, cigarette in hand, and ready for the next challenge. The only reason I have him ranked this high is because he is the main character in the show; however, those who know that Matt Weiner is a devotee of David Chase, should expect an ambiguous, Tony-Soprano-in-the-diner ending, not a Don-clutching-his-chest-and-fading-to-black ending. 

Pete Campbell (10-1): It seemed like Pete was <this close> to doing something untoward to himself while his marriage circled the drain and his paramour Beth Dawes had any memory of him zapped from her brain, [8] but his temporary relocation to California did nothing to salve the emotional wounds Pete suffers from. He is every bit as petulant, whiny, and offensive as ever and at some point, either by his own hand or someone else's, things are not going to end well. 

Roger Sterling: (3-1): Don's Sancho Panza, who almost did not make it through 1960 [9], has rebounded nicely through the sixties, but at some point all that Stoli, nicotine, and unhealthy diet have to catch up to him, right? 

What do you think?

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END NOTES

1. Indian Summer, Season 1, Episode 11. 

2. Waterloo, Season 7, Episode 7.

3. Other notable deaths include Gene Hofstadt (The Arrangements, Season 3, Episode 4), Anna Draper (The Suitcase, Season 4, Episode 7), Ida "The Astronaut" Blankenship (The Beautiful Girls, Season 4, Episode 9), Lane Pryce (Commissions and Fees, Season 5, Episode 12), Mother Sterling (The Doorway Part I, Season 6, Episode 1), and Frank Gleason (The Crash, Season 6, Episode 8). 

4. The Quality of Mercy, Season 6, Episode 12. 

5. The Doorway Part II, Season 6, Episode 2. 

6. See, e.g., commenting on a Saturday night in the suburbs as making him want to "blow his brains out," (Signal 30, Season 5, Episode 5), doodling nooses on a note pad, (To Have and To Hold, Season 6, Episode 4), and using imagery others considered suicidal for a Royal Hawaiian marketing pitch (The Doorway Part II, Season 6, Episode 2). 

7. Don felt responsible for Adam Whitman's death because Don pushed him away. Don felt responsible for Lane Pryce's death because he fired Lane after discovering the Brit had embezzled money from the firm and forged Don's signature on the check that he wrote to steal from the firm.

8. The Phantom, Season 5, Episode 13. 

9. During Season 1, Roger has two heart attacks in close proximity to one another. 

Book Review - Citizens of the Green Room

In the wake of This Town, his dishy, behind-the-curtain expose of the venality of "official" Washington, Mark Leibovich has published a follow-up of sorts. Citizens of the Green Room is sub-titled "profiles in courage and self-delusion" but the quippy title does little to mask the book's utter lack of charm or cohesion.

Citizens is a collection of Mr. Leibovich's writing over the years and offers readers the same sort of "access" to politicians, pundits, and hangers-on that his prior work did. There are vignettes about candidates for President waiting in line to use the men's room (then-candidate John Kerry comes up with a clever work around - using the women's room while a staffer stands a post outside), road trips in campaign vehicles (John McCain gets Phoenix Coyotes hockey updates while bantering with the author, Rick Santorum fires down food-on-the-go) and Chris Matthews holding court during the wee hours after a Presidential debate (his decorum is as you'd expect from a blowhard who keeps a running tally of the number of honorary degrees bestowed upon him).

But the book's failure is in its editing. Instead of sorting his prior work temporally or by subject matter, the reader is left hopscotching across the last ten or so years of politics, encountering names long forgotten (Scott McClellan or Jim Traficant anyone?) juxtaposed stories of the moment that are now so much water under the bridge (remember when Glenn Beck was a thing? or Teddy Kennedy Jr. was considered a serious candidate for his father's Senate seat?)

The narrative does not line up with the book's cover either, which shows a faceless man with his hand over his heart, money where a pocket square should be, an American flag lapel pin and a clip mic - which would suggest some nexus of money and access that This Town plumbed in depth but Citizens only lightly grazes. And while some of Leibovich's earlier work may take on importance (his mid 2000s profile of Jeb Bush includes references to insensitive comments Bush made about women and African-Americans during his 1994 race for Governor), much of it is political flotsam that is no longer relevant (does anyone really care what kind of memory device former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card relied on as opposed to his memorable observation that the "marketing" of the Iraq War would commence after Labor Day 2002 because summer "marketing" campaigns are ineffective). 

There is no question Leibovich is a talented writer whose punchy and descriptive prose paints a nice picture; however, little of what is included in Citizens has aged well or is worth revisiting. 

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The Village

Today’s Politico Playbook nicely summarized the Beltway media’s disdain for the electoral process while neatly encapsulating the conventional wisdom of DC elites. You see, there is no need to hold Presidential primaries next year, because Mike Allen has advised us, in something he dubbed his “facts of life:"

What should be the presidential race of a lifetime (open nomination in both parties) is starting to look like a slog and maybe even a snore. Barring a major disruption in the force field, it's looking like Hillary vs. Jeb, and the same might still be true a year from now. The new dynamic of the GOP race, once totally up for grabs, is that someone has to knock out Jeb. It could be Walker, it could be Rubio, it could be Rand - but it'll be hard. The D.C. chatter is that for all Bush's advantages in the invisible primary, he has yet to encounter random voters, or perform strongly in an unscripted (or even scripted!) setting. Bush skeptics wonder over drinks if he's Phil Gramm from '96 - huge war chest, but a paper tiger.

But here's the rub: There's no post-Reagan instance of a Republican candidate who locks up the center right slot, plus big donors and the clear establishment blessing, then loses the nomination - Bush 41, Dole, Bush 43, McCain, Romney. Obviously, this trend could break. But based on what we know about modern campaigns, Bush 45 looks very strong for the nomination at this point.

Why is Jeb Bush looking “very strong” for the GOP nomination in 2016? Because the Village said so. Because the people who cover Presidential politics genuflected before Jeb Bush at his first batted eyelash toward running for President. Because DC elites fawn over things like lists of former high-ranking government officials who will be advising the former Florida Governor, never mind the fact that some of these nefarious characters were responsible for the calamity that was the Iraq War. Because it is easy to dismiss polls showing that Bush is trailing his competition in Iowa and New Hampshire because his last name is “Bush,” ergo, he is presumptive even if he has already stepped on his dick with the hiring of a social media guru who quit because of racist tweets and during his one foreign policy speech, he confused Iraq and Iran and misstated, by an order of magnitude, the number of fighters in ISIS. Because the Village gave his brother a similar pass in 2000, never calling him out on his “fuzzy math” or vague policy ideas because he seemed like a decent guy to hang out with. Because the Village hasn’t questioned Jeb’s role in the 2000 election, Terry Schiavo, stand your ground laws, or his business dealings (much less some intemperate remarks he made about women and African-Americans during his 1994 run for Florida Governor).

In other words, the Village has spoken. The American people be damned.

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