Mad Men Episode 12: An Understated JFK Assassination

Well, the episode we knew was approaching occurred, one week earlier than most predicted. Thankfully Mad Men’s handling of the JFK assassination was understated, which added to its effectiveness. As one reader said to me, “They just snuck it on the TV as Peter and Harry were talking.”

And in a series known for its historical accuracy, it was also a fairly accurate depiction; certainly the news footage of Frank Reynolds, Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley was real (I especially appreciated how they kept the sound from the Oswald footage intact—there was a horn blowing just at the moment Ruby shot Oswald; Mad Men kept that sound in). [For an excellent look at the footage of that day, some of which was seen in last night's episode, see History's 3 Shots That Changed America.]

Matt Weiner used the JFK assassination to add detail to his characters, speckling color on his canvas like so many bits of paint. Also note that last night’s episode didn’t have Don or Betty Draper on screen until 10 minutes in. Oh, but when they first appear it’s a sweeping curve ball: Betty finds Don rocking baby Gene in the dark. Don’s somehow turned to family after his secret family has been exposed after Betty found his secret shoebox. Interestingly Don seems to want to keep his marriage intact to protect his kids, whom he kissed last night and cuddled with on the couch. Certainly, though, he wants his marriage to last in order to maintain the facade of the happy American family, an ideal he’s constantly selling products to while at work.

Sterling Gray: First, the character complications, beginning with some shades of gray added to what had seemed like a black and white Roger Sterling. After last week’s episode, when Roger defended the sanctity of his new marriage to young Jane against the advances of an older, but still attractive, former flame, Annabelle Mathis, you’d have expected to find the man worshiping his child bride. We discovered last night that this is not the case. In fact, Roger treats her coldly, offering her no solace over the JFK assassination (that warmth is reserved for Joanie “Red” Harris, Mrs. Joanie “Red” Harris, actually). In all fairness, Jane is a child, not unlike Roger’s daughter. In addition, we find Jane is a bit petulant (locking herself in the bathroom) and she treats Roger coldly (she refuses to leave the hotel kitchen to hear Roger’s toast, which she says she’s heard “1,000 times.”

[A perceptive note about Jane sent in from one of our readers. Perhaps Annabelle wasn’t far off the mark when she chided Roger for having married “a teenager” during last week’s episode. Our reader says that when Roger is carrying a drunk and depressed Jane to bed (the symbolism of Roger carrying his wife seems apt) after the wedding she says of JFK, “Now I won’t ever be able to vote for him.” Since the voting age was 21 in 1963, we must assume Jane’s remark indicates she was not yet 21 at the time of the 1960 election. If we put her at age 20 in 1960 she was 22 or 23 when Roger married her. If we interpret Jane's remark to mean that she would have turned 21 by 1964, the time of the subsequent election, then she was either 19 or 20 when Roger made a Sterling out of her.]

On the other hand Roger’s character deepens when some humanity is added to his profile. His toast to the newlyweds was touching, as was his public tribute to ex-wife Mona. Incidentally, I thought Mona was very reasonable in her dealing with that petulant daughter of hers. Now why did Roger leave her? Oh, yes, he traded her in for a younger model. A much younger model.

Still, in a series whose central theme is that appearances are not necessarily reality, the entire wedding scene raises questions. Is Weiner telling us that only ad men could stage the ultimate deception—go through with a celebration at a time when the nation was mourning its slain president? Or is it just to prove that life goes on, as Joan told Roger during their phone call: babies are being born, cars are crashing, Greg is working, etc?

It’s interesting, too, that another trustworthy lot, politicians, fared poorly last evening. When Henry Francis’ daughter asks her father why he’s staring at Betty Draper as they are dancing, he denies the accusation. (Of course, later we find Henry wants to marry Betty. In addition, Betty, the apparently happy wife, admits to Henry she knows her husband has been “lying to me for years.” Accordingly, she does some lying of her own, telling Don she’s going out for a drive “to clear her head,” when in fact she’s headed to a rendezvous with Henry.)

A More Savory Soup: Next, Weiner complicates the character of Pete Campbell, who up until this point largely had been an unfeeling rogue. Right off the bat he softens his stance on instant hot chocolate, telling his secretary, whom he has maligned previously, “I’m sorry…this hits the spot.”

And Pete’s reaction to JFK’s assassination is interesting. Did he share the slain president’s politics? I wouldn’t have thought so, but its sounds like he did. And recall that Pete’s understanding that blacks have a growing economic power in the country was a central theme of an earlier episode this season, which might indicate liberal tendencies. Another point is that Pete, contemplating new President Lyndon Baines Johnson, says, “We didn’t even vote for him,” a sentiment many echoed at the time. In fact, Johnson was at a very low point right around the time of the assassination, and there’s evidence that he was drinking heavily and depressed. Several years JFK’s senior, he felt he’d made a poor political choice by accepting the Vice President’s job, a role that kept him far in the background after 12 years in the Senate, including stints as Majority and Minority Leader.

In any case Pete clearly is moved by the JFK incident. Perhaps he’s been softened by the promotion he missed at work. Or it could be that he’s moved by the swiftness of fate. One moment you have a young, vibrant president, the next he’s dead. One moment Pete has a promising career, the next moment he’s been moved off to the side.

What last evening may indicate is that, yes, Pete’s rotten, but perhaps not to the core. Campbell complains to his wife with great indignation about the awful things people were saying about Kennedy after he’d been killed, “the man made a lot of enemies.” He’s also aghast at how Harry Crane was able to do business at a time of crisis. While everyone was grieving, Crane was calculating the number of ads that would not be running as a result of the extended news coverage of JFK’s death, Pete says. Of course the way he complains, being so judgmental, bothers me. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Take note, Pete. Oh, if you’d like, we could translate that into German for you.

Whom Can I Turn To? A clever device last night was seeing where characters turned when they wanted to talk about JFK.

Herman “Duck” Phillips called his children (leaving a naked Peggy Olson to fend for herself; interesting, too, that Duck unplugged the hotel TV so as not to impinge on his long awaited see-Duck-tion of young Peggy). In an indirectly related incident, did you notice that Peggy complains how smokey Duck’s hotel room is? Obviously she’s missed one of the finer things in life.

Roger, as we know, turned to Joan “Red” Harris, his former mistress. Joanie notices her usually flippant old flame is “really upset” about the assassination. And his usual dark sense of humor is gone “because there’s nothing funny about this,” she explains to him.

Betty turns to older man Henry Francis for a secret meeting and tonsillectomy in her Lincoln Town Car. Yes, that the car’s a Lincoln seems a sad irony with all the talk about assassinations. Please note Henry doesn’t force the issue of marriage. He takes his own advice: when you don’t have the power, delay. He knows he lacks the power, so he’ll just put the option of marriage out there on the table for Betty to mull. No rush, he says. Of course, Henry would be much more attractive to Betty if he were married, at least that’s the way the noted relationship guru and Peggy Olson room mate, Karen Erickson, sees it. Why are you with Duck if he’s not married? she asks Peggy.

Pete turns inward and later to his wife, Trudy, who eventually rallies to his cause, joining him in his protest of the Sterling wedding and later urging him to “gather” his clients, presumably to take them to the Duck pond.

Don turns to his couch and later his ‘mistress:’ an empty Sterling Cooper office, inhabited only by his former secretary, Peggy Olson. And don’t forget his liquor stash at the office. “The bars are closed,” Don tells Peggy to explain his coming into work on a day of national mourning. Peggy shows Don a series of drawings for the Aqua Net campaign that feature four people riding in an open car. The thing is, in the frame-by-frame style of display, the drawings look unfortunately like scenes from the Zapruder film, the infamous footage that shows the shots hitting JFK in the chest and head as he rode in an open car along Dealey Plaza in Dallas. And Peggy’s choice of words is sadly ironic. “It [meaning the Aqua Net commercial] doesn’t shoot until after Thanksgiving. We’ll be OK,” she tells Don. Ouch.

Notes: The obvious theme of advertising’s deception was brought home in the Ken Cosgrove-Pete Campbell incident. Look who receives the promotion—not the man who cares for the needs of his clients (Pete), but the one who cons his clients into believing they have no needs (Ken), Lane the Brit admits. – You have to love the consistency of Don Draper. The great pretender himself is annoyed that he comes home to find his children are watching news coverage of the JFK assassination. He’d rather pretend like nothing has happened, a ploy that Don, er, Dick, er Don has had plenty of time to master. Heck, that’s the way he runs his marriage. Betty often is the same way, but even she relents. “Do you want me to keep [the news about JFK] from them?” Betty asks Don sarcastically. – Certainly Don’s assurances to Betty as they are dancing at the wedding—“everything will be all right”—are ambiguous. Is he referring to the country after Kennedy or the marital bliss of Don and Betty Draper? The scene on Monday, the national day of mourning, in the Draper breakfast room, is wonderful. Don can barely make himself go into the room. He bids farewell to his kids, but says nothing to Betty, and little Sally turns around and notices that her parents are indifferent to each other. Well, certainly they’re not in love, are they? After all, that time-tested evidence of love and commitment to home, marriage and family came up negative for the Drapers. You know that sure-fire test: The Kiss on the Dance Floor with Your Husband as Your Illicit Lover Waltzes Nearby And Both of You Pretend Not to Notice The Other. Well that test turned out to be negative. As Betty told Don, ‘When I kissed you yesterday [at the wedding], I didn’t feel anything. I don’t love you.’ There, that proves it. As we’ve said in earlier posts, gosh, is this marriage a mess.