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  1. Culture
18 May 2012updated 12 Oct 2023 10:19am

Mad Men: season 5, episode 9

Green-eyed monsters and the downfall of kings.

By Alice Gribbin


It’s Thanksgiving. “Bring something sweet” to dinner, Megan tells her acting friend. The great irony of “Dark Shadows”, we quickly learn, is everyone is sour; nobody is thankful. “The grass is always greener,” Howard laughingly tells Pete. “Every man for himself,” Roger defensively yells at Peggy. The title of episode nine comes from the 1966 American TV show, a series of gothic tales where the characters are werewolves, witches and vampires. This week Mad Men is populated by green-eyed monsters.

Betty’s jealousy of Megan, and her life with Don, is the most rancorous of all. It’s not enough that she surveys the new Draper home – spacious, light and lived in – that contrasts so obviously with her mortician’s mansion, but Betty has to catch a lingering sight of Megan (strangely changing clothes at the end of the day), slim and pert in her brassiere. After seeing a sweet note written by Don to his new wife, Betty acts on her jealousy – vindictive, crunching on celery, she tries to use her daughter to plant a bitter seed. But Sally is now dependable for her feistiness and won’t be duped. Though her criticisms of Megan are biting – “You’re a phony. Guess what? You’re not special . . . So why did he marry you?” – Sally has learned there are more artful ways to take control. In the knowing voice of an adult she later lies to her mother, saying Don and Megan “spoke very fondly of [Anna]”. Megan can teach Sally how to cry on cue but her stepdaughter is at least as good an actress.

Beside the Drapers’ is another apartment in the city where a poisonous ex-spouse has overstayed their welcome. With toxic smog in the air that morning, Roger leaves Jane’s new place that he has “ruined” by sleeping with her in it. Whether or not we believe his claim to feeling “terrible” about it (and with his dejected exit aren’t we inclined to?), Jane is right: Roger has everything he wants and it’s still not enough.

There’s some clear and clever parallels, as we often find, between Roger and Don in this episode. Desperate to not be outdone by Pete, Roger commissions Ginsberg to work afterhours on new ideas – because “when a man hates a man very much . . . ” he has to go behind his back and screw him over. But when he says “hate” he’s speaking about Bert Cooper – Roger won’t “devote the energy to hating people anymore”. If Roger is the deceiving, undermining accounts man then Don is his creative equivalent: working on a Sunday, rifling through Michael’s notes and dumping his Sno Ball pitch before selling his own to the clients. Don also claims he doesn’t act out of hate; while Ginsberg “feel[s] bad for” Don, the elder doesn’t “think about [him] at all”. But is the Jew really Ozymandias, the king of kings, looking on his works (“ye mighty”) and telling others to despair? Whose vanity – we look too at Roger and Pete – will be their downfall first?

Peggy, for her own reasons, takes satisfaction in Ginsberg’s loss. Her New Yorker-style ad was not of interest to Don (perhaps it’s the hip, new agency thinking that the New York Times was after?), and we must wonder if her exit from SCDP is imminent. Last week she flipped at Draper over Megan in the Cool Whip kitchen; now, in a moment of elevator drama (a common site for it), she tells Roger he has betrayed her: “You are not loyal. You only think about yourself.” Earlier on when looking at the agency’s recent output Don noted that “Peggy really got buried by Heinz”. And albeit out of pride and spite, Don is finally wringing some creativity from himself. Will Peggy act on her pact with Ken Cosgrove and move on? Perhaps she should heed the jolly jingle that plays out the episode: “If you want happiness just help yourself to some”.

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