Mad Men Season 5 Episode 5

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 5

“Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs”

Whenever we hear this song by Tracy Chapman, S launches into a diatribe about how she really dislikes Tracy Chapman. No one in the family knows why. It’s one of those inexplicable things like volcanos erupting or people thinking up a game like curling. The fifth episode of Mad Men is about, Pete Campbell, who has moved out the burbs with his wife and new child to live the dream. The same dream that Don Draper was living with his wife, Betty, now divorced, in season one of Mad Men.

Pete has always been a bizarre dopppleganger of Don’s. Like Don, he is extremely driven to succeed in business, he’s ruthless and careless with women. It was clear in the first season, right from the start that a part of Don’s dislike for Pete was based on how much Pete cared about rising in the ranks of Sterling-Cooper. However, retelling the sad story of, Don, through the eyes of, Pete Campbell, does change some things.

For one, Pete is obsequious. Where Don has always been charming with women and overpoweringly opinionated and successful in business using his creative vision to bludgeon clients, Pete has always been slyly wheedling in the background, trying to convince everyone to like him. Not in a charming way, but in the sort of way that makes everyone feel uncomfortable because they know they are being had, that the person Pete really wants to please is himself, and that underneath every compliment is a man who is, in short, pretty much an a-hole, which no amount of posturing can hide. Why is it that we dislike people who are trying so desperately hard to be liked?

The episode takes its original shape around a dinner party thrown by the Campbells in which the Draper’s play a starring role. The dislike for Pete is always practically dripping off Don, he notes that he wishes Pete could close the deal as well as his wife, who quasi cons he and Megan into coming over. The dinner party goes off without a hitch. The interesting part of the evening is the transformation that takes place in Don. He winds up fixing a sink and actually conversing with the people at the table as if they were friends, rather than subordinates. This season continues to be Don’s discovery of life through the vehicle of his wife. He is finding out that he likes people, noting that Megan likes everyone.

Of course, there lies in wait the very real possibility that Don doesn’t particularly like being happy, or at least not in the conventional manner. It’s interesting to watch, to see if we’ll be convinced that the Leopard can changes his spots. Can someone live for twenty years as one person and wake up as someone else one morning? Perhaps. Perhaps not. More likely it will be something in between. It’s certainly relevant to ask whether everyone craves happiness. Perhaps Don, perhaps many people are not happiness after all, but something else, contentment, dominion. Certainly these parts of our personality are always in play, occasionally warring with one another in a fight to guide our thoughts and our dreams.

Despite the fact that this episode is basically the Pete Campbell episode, Ken Cosgrove also plays an important role. Ken has a steady and happy marriage that remains largely off screen. He is in the process of working on a collection of short stories that are going to be published by a good press in New York. Ie, outlier here, he seems to be happy.  (Before I move on to talk about the implications of Ken’s writing, it’s of note to discuss why Ken and his wife remain off screen so much. S complained that the show was basically about infidelity, unhappiness etc. I asked whether it would be an “interesting” show if the people were sitting around discussing their work day over a game of backgammon. She demurred after a while, conceding that perhaps watching scenes of blissful people pouring one another coffee and reading the morning news wouldn’t be as interesting. I don’t particularly know why that is true? I suppose we are social creatures and like to gather our social queues from other’s experiences. And yet, if you’ve lived long enough to see the various “happy” marriages and lives that people have carved out for themselves there is not a lot of universality. Sure, certain characteristics like not being an absolute ja-k-ss are probably applicable, but the way that two people find a way to make a life work together is invariably their own, and count me as a person who isn’t particularly interested in watching someone butter toast. ((This whole thing is hard to do, and maybe that’s some of the pleasure of Downton Abbey at its best. Forget all the intrigue and lying and death. The show is at its purest when they are debating the placement of a fork and making it drama)).

Ken’s writing winds up being a sore subject at work. Roger asks him to stop writing and Ken gives his assent, noting that it probably wasn’t going anywhere anyway. (Classic writer response. Also, true). Ken winds up writing under a new pen name by the end of the episode, dissecting the strange and lonely life of Pete Campbell in a short story, talking about the pernicious allure of the suburbs. I won’t comment on the proclivity of writers to write about other writers, particularly in a glorified fashion, except to say that Ken Cosgrove is much too happy to be a believable writer.

Pete spends the latter portion of the episode trying to seduce a young woman in his driver’s education class, only to be eventually outdone by a young handsome man named handsome. After failing with the young girl, Pete, Roger and Don head out with a new potential client who indicates that he’d be inclined to have more fun than he’d had on a previous outing with Lane. Naturally, they head off to a whorehouse where Roger, Pete, and the potential client sample what the house to offer. The camera only follows Pete, who demands that his accompanying woman assume the correct personality before he’s willing to partake. It is this strange need for control, something almost evil that seems to lie under Pete’s every move and motive. The same behavior, when watched through the lens of Don should be no less morally reprehensible, and yet, it certainly doesn’t feel that way.

Don and Pete ride home in the cab together, affirming the strange duality between the two. Don chastises Pete, claiming that when you have it good it’s not worth screwing up. Pete accuses Don of pulling his pants up to the world because he’s still in the honeymoon phase. Pete, as start and odd companion to Don, stands out in this episode’s final scene, saying to Don, “I have nothing.” Of course, Pete has a nice house in the suburbs, a child, a wife, and yet, something is missing. The dream that he was seeking or thought he wanted turned out to be a mirage. That’s in large part why he seems to want to continue to pursue other women, to temporarily alleviate the feeling of emptiness, of nothingness that hangs around his neck like a millstone. This is not just the internal dialogue of Pete, but of Paul, of every piece of writing that castigates the vapidity of the “American Dream.” The vapidity is not the American Dream, it is not living in the suburbs, or the city, having the right set of clothes or car, the vapidity is to think that your dreams and hopes and desires can ever be satiated. 

Of course, Pete's final moment of failure comes when the old British man in the office, Lane, challenges him to a boxing match and beats him up. It's one of those strange scenes where you're rooting at first for Lane not to just get beat up, and then when you realize he's going to win, you are both happy and simultaneously kind of sad of the further confirmation of Pete's essential weaseliness. He could be a Dickens villain.