Mad World on Kritik: Mad Men Season 6.9
"Margins, Regressions, and Betty’s Little Smile"
Guest Writer: Eleanor Courtemanche

Monday, May 27, 2013

posted under , , , , , , by Unit for Criticism
[The eighth in the Unit for Criticism's multi-authored series of posts on Season 6 of AMC's Mad Men, posted in collaboration with the publication of MAD MEN, MAD WORLD: Sex, Politics, Style, and the 1960s (Duke University Press, March 2013) Eds. Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky and Robert A. Rushing]

"Margins, Regressions, and Betty’s Little Smile"

Written by: Eleanor Courtemanche (English)

It might be summer 1968 in the world of Mad Men, but it’s freezing cold outside. Nothing’s worse than being left alone, either at a breakfast table, on the balcony of your posh Upper East Side apartment, or in the middle of a sterile advertising agency. A thug might shoot you as you’re walking alone through Central Park!


We first hear the sirens when Megan fails to interest Don in dinner, and they sound louder and louder until the rock comes crashing through the window of Abe and Peggy’s apartment. Worst case scenario: you yourself are the midnight thug. You knife your boyfriend in the gut by accident, and then have him break up with you in the ambulance before he passes out. No, even worse: you tell your crushworthy boss about your sad breakup and he gives you the cold shoulder, disguised as a cheery admonition to get to work. At least you have your mentor … but then Don closes his door as well, leaving you—Peggy—stranded outside the empty conference room, in the episode’s last chilly image.


In scary circumstances (let’s not forget that Bobby Kennedy was shot in a hotel kitchen at the end of the last episode), people seek shelter. But relationships in this show are a game of musical chairs: someone always gets left out. So this episode is a series of frantic transactions as characters try to maximize their desirability to others while keeping their own choices open. Peggy starts the show as the fulcrum of the new hybrid agency SCDP/CGC: when Ted and Don can’t compromise between their competing margarine pitches, they both turn to Peggy to break the tie. Peggy wins, clearly—Pete’s protestations that he “agrees with Don” only emphasize his total irrelevance in the agency’s power structure. Nobody wants you, Pete! Pete, your only superpower is your massively receding hairline.

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