Mad Men: Modern Compartmentalization

I was hoping Mad Men was filmically rudimentary so that I didn't have to watch it. Damn it all.

The coda really is fantastic, especially with Pete being wiped off the screen as Peggy departs.

Your montage captures my other favorite moment from this episode: Don's brief, seething stare after Allison locks eyes with him through the glass. Even protected by one-way glass Don just hates it when people look behind his curtain.

You have to like how the through-the-window shot of Pete has him right in the center of the word "Draper."

Love this video essay, Jim. The opportunity to do video essays is one of the great outcomes of film criticism on the web! I look forward to your photo essay (yay Internet!).

I didn't even notice the parallel between Pete and Peggy softly slamming their heads into the wall/desk until seeing it here.

I already wrote this on MZS' post but will just cut and paste it here (why reinvent the words?) since it's relevant:

A motif that I enjoyed was Pete being excluded, hidden away, and treated like a non-partner in the firm. At the beginning of the ep, he asks why he was excluded from the teleconference with Lucky Stripe (the biggest client). Then, the scenes in his office all include comedy around the support beam that hides the view of his desk; people have to look around it to see him (including the higher-up, Lane). Even Harry treats him like a lower class citizen by momentarily claiming Pete's desk as his own. Pete doesn't fully join the rest of the partners until the elevator scene at the end, after he's acquired the large account (and what a great scene that is, the glass wall splitting Pete and Peggy and their respective groups).

I was really impressed with Slattery's direction in the episode. There are several points where I was taken by how great a lot of the shots were, and they were great in ways that absolutely served the story and enriched the writing. That shot of Joan opening the curtains is brilliantly blunt and striking and the episode is incredibly well cut too. Not since Barbet Shroeder's episode last season has a director done so much to illustrate new things about the world the show is in that were there all along but never spotlighted.

Slattery talked a bit about the process of directing an episode for the show (and how labor intensive it is) on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, about an hour and five minutes in to the link below. Somewhat surprising he's never directed anything before, given how assured this episode is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzCwj7z7JwI

Also of note in that show is him talking about working on K Street, which I think is kind of a masterpiece and completely unlike anything in TV or Movies ever.

I'm so THRILLED to see your post about Mad Men here! It so deserves your write-up and remarks. Last week's episode was beautifully shot, as always wonderfully acted, and the SCORE! I'm so surprised no one has mentioned the score that was played when Pete and Peggy stole their look through that glass wall. What a treat that was.

I watch way too much TV. And Mad Men and Lost are the only two TV shows I thought were true cinematic treasures.

I've often wondered what you or Mr. Ebert thought of this show. I'm glad to now know the answer for one of you.

Thank you for this!

I agree with Bob up top. I've never been interested in Mad Men, the stories seemed too prosaic to me. Your video essay may have convinced me to give it another try. Kudos to you for putting it together, and to Slattery for providing the material.

That was a truly excellent episode. Since season two onwards the quality has been a tad inconsistent. Certain episodes feel perfunctory, with almost nothing happening and with no advancements to the plot. Certain episodes also lack any real visual flair, and are shot in a fairly dull, pedestrian TV style. And then you get episodes like this, which are so artfully done, and so brilliant, it reminds me why I loved this show in the first place. Why can't every episode be as good as this? The scene near the end of exchanging glances between Peggy and Pete was just about the most perfect scene I've seen this year.

Did anyone else notice that in the episode where Joan conducted the lipstick testing on the other side of the mirror (in the old office) she was wearing a red dress and in this episode, where she is on this side of the mirror, she is wearing a blue dress? I found that interesting.

The music during the coda really struck me as well. I feel like we haven't heard anything in the score that was quite like that. Beautiful.

Great video essay! An excellent episode--one of the best by far. Don chain smoking in the first shot(from a low, wide angle--heh) and Peggy peeking through his "wall" (and then carefully stepping down from her desk) were very telling of their characters--no words needed. The reason why every episode can't be this good is because it's very difficult to make something this good.

Thank you, Jim. It is a really good, really short, movie. Slattery played so well with others in directing this episode. I loved Peggy peeking over the top of the partition, as someone else mentioned, after Allison's violence and noise in Don's office.

I haven't always loved Mad Men, but last season and this one I find delicious.

I've always been fascinated by the compartmentalization of the show, too. My wife is just starting to watch it, so I've been re-watching the first season with her, and I was particularly struck by how much the show foreshadows this particular motif in the first episode. Between Don making all of his "stops" around the city, to the brilliant shot of Pete extending his hand to Don in a two-shot with a stark, white background. There's a line (a wall to the offices behind them) down the center of the backdrop separating the two characters, with only Pete's hand barely trying crossing Don's "side". You also have the great conversation between Don and Rachel, where Rachel tells him that she knows what it's like to feel disconnected (she has two strikes against her in Don's world: she's Jewish and she's a woman).

Your mention of the mirrors, designated work spaces, and clearly designed "territories" acts, as you say here with your visual essay, as visual representations of this motif. It's something that's always fascinated me about "Mad Men" and about the Don Draper character in general.

What's ironic, of course, is with the evolution of technology how much more sectioned off the work environment would become. It actually looks fairly open and communal at Sterling/Cooper; not such a terrible place to work...well, if you're a man that is.

I really enjoyed this video essay, Jim. Kudos to you, sir.

So, so glad you like Mad Men!

I post over at Televison Without Pity about this show, but I'm glad to see this analyisis of the shots and composition of the use of a small space (SCDP's new digs) to try to convey to clients that the MM will give them the world. Joan's brisk movements around the office, without a gesture wasted, demonstrated mind over matter with elegance and wit of the nonverbal kind.

I was most intrigued by the focus group that Allison was required to join (she was in the right age bracket and so off she goes) knowing that Don was on the other side of the glass staring at her. She was literally trapped in a mirror, in society's expectations of what she was supposed to want.

It was supposed to read as a bit funny when she choked out her accusation: "I don't say this lightly--but you are not a good person!" But it wasn't funny, it was the simple truth, and all the one way glass in the world can't shield Don from it.

Pete's magnificent shrug

Yes, it was. And it was the most striking part of the episode for me. Pete's always been a bit of a passive-aggressive milquetoast. To see him tell his father-in-law "If you keep jumping to conclusions, I'll respect you even less" was almost out of character. Until his FIL called him a "sonafabich" and he shrugged. Then you knew it was really him asserting himself truly for the first time. Even earlier in the episode, when he was dining with Cosgrove, he was defensive and passive.

Mad Men is the best movie of the year and it's only 4 episodes in!

Since theatrical films have become comic books the best writing and acting and occasionally directing is on TV especially the AMC shows: Breaking Bad, Mad Men and now Rubicon!

I just starting reading your blog Jim, and all I have to say is wow, I can't stop reading. It's like going to film school, but I'm actually leanring something.