Mad Men, Season 5

So I found Simon?s thoughts a useful reminder that this story we?re commenting on each week is still unfolding. But in thinking more about this most recent episode of Mad Men, it also occurred to me that this series is something of a special case when it comes to the recapping debate. Novelistic sweep has become a sine qua non of great cable drama, thanks in no small part to The Wire, and Mad Men is certainly a compelling longform narrative, of an ad man whose biggest lies are the ones he tells about (and to) himself. But Mad Men episodes also frequently operate like nearly self-contained short stories, with their own themes, motifs, and internal rhymes.

Take ?Mystery Date.? As you guys have astutely noted in your posts this week, the theme of this episode was the connection between sex and violence, and each of the plot lines took up this theme in a different, yet connected way: Don attempts to kill off his libido, in the form of a discarded lover come back for more; Ginsberg?s pitch to Baxter is inflected with the frisson of violence he picks up on when Joyce shows off her contact sheet of Speck photos; Sally and Pauline achieve detente over a Seconal taken to help them escape their Speck-induced fears. Julia, you pointed out a related motif: hiding under the bed, a detail that migrates from the news accounts of the Speck murders into the episode?s narrative. A reader noticed another: Recurring scenes of characters opening doors (Don for Libido Lady, Joan for her husband/not-baby-daddy, Peggy for a furtive Dawn), playing off the newfound fear about who might be lurking on the other side of a closed door in the wake of the Speck news. And all those heels! A symbol of female sexuality, but also vulnerability, as Richard Posner has been saying for years.

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