Mad World on Kritik: Mad Men Season 6.3
"Pete and Repeat"
Guest Writer: Lilya Kaganovsky
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
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Kaganovsky
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Mad Men
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Mad World
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Mikhail Bakhtin
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Season 6
by Unit for Criticism
[The second 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]“Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.”
Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain in the House of Commons, after the Munich accords (1938)
Written by: Lilya Kagonovsky (Slavic/Comparative Literature)
Episode 3 of the sixth season of Mad Men takes place at the end of January 1968, roughly between the capture of USS Pueblo by the North Koreans and the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive. War (secret, undeclared) is the obvious subtext: between the news about North Korea and the Viet Cong on Pete’s TV and Sylvia’s radio, Roger’s references to “Munich” and the quote from Churchill that he misattributes to his late mother, there is a sense that many of the characters are poised on the brink of violence, hovering somewhere between “war and dishonour.”
As Uncle Mack explains to young Don, he’s the cock in the hen house, which means he gets to sleep with all the hens, including, as we learn at the end, Don’s very pregnant stepmother, Abigail. We already know that Don is sleeping with his neighbor’s wife (but we don’t know that he sneaks in every time the good Dr. Rosen is out of the building), and we’re not surprised that Pete is sleeping with everything he can, including his rather naïve neighbor, Brenda, who—not unlike Sylvia—imagines their affair to be something slightly more than it is (after the first time, she immediately proposes calling Pete at home and hanging up, and leaving small signs of affection, like parking her car on the street, to let him know she’s thinking of him. She cannot even begin to compare to the beauty of Beth from Season 5, drawing a heart on the car window.) Indeed, the moment of violence arrives when Pete’s enjoyment of Johnny Carson (itself about to be interrupted by news from Vietnam) is interrupted by screams and shouting outside the house. Brenda, complete with nightgown, bathrobe, and a bloody face and nose, shows up on the Campbells' doorstep after her husband discovers her dalliance with Pete.Read more