Mad World on Kritik: Mad Men Season 6.1/2
"Lend Me Your Ears"
Guest Writer: Bruce Robbins
Monday, April 8, 2013
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Mad Men
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Mad World
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Season 6
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Vietnam War
by Unit for Criticism
[The first 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]"Lend Me Your Ears"
Written by: Bruce Robbins (Columbia University)
The question that had been posed in the last frame of Season 5-- would Don return to his pursuit of Other Women?-- is answered only toward the end of "The Doorway" (Season 6, Episode 1/2) the 2-hour premier, which finds Don in bed with the Italian wife of his downstairs neighbor Dr Rosen. The Catholic paraphernalia that fill the frame as the camera pans left toward the bed makes the point that this sex involves betrayal, a betrayal in which more is betrayed than Don’s unconscious wife. Perhaps this is why, to my eye at least, throughout the episode Don seems more nervous and burdened than usual. Comments are made by co-workers on how fresh he does or doesn’t look, whether he appears to have benefitted from the Hawaiian vacation we see him enjoying, or half-enjoying, or pretending to enjoy, in the opening minutes.
The idea of an intensified betrayal is prepared by the episode’s mysterious opening: the camera looks up from the floor at the face we will later identify as Dr Rosen, who it turns out is resuscitating both the doorman and Mad Men itself after its long months of hibernation. This is too ponderous to be experienced as a joke, and it’s also too grim. Dr Rosen pops up
again in the elevator, that quintessential place of brief encounter for the series, and then in Don’s office, where he has the rare privilege of overhearing Don in creative mode. There are signs of what may be a budding friendship between the two men, forged perhaps when they shared the near-death experience of the building’s doorman, "Jonesie," who collapses in front of them, thus giving Rosen the chance to show his medical skills. When he visits Don’s office (the company has the Leica account, and Don has offered the doctor a free camera), Rosen refers to their two kinds of work as if medicine and advertising had much in common. Don modestly rejects the suggestion, but the idea has been established of medical life-saving as a standard by which other sorts of work, like advertising, can be judged. We discover that Don has been sleeping with Rosen’s wife only when the doctor is called away from a dinner party at Don and Megan’s to deal with a medical emergency late on a snowy New Year’s Eve--so late and so snowy that taxis will be unavailable and Rosen leaves for the hospital on skis dug up (with Don’s help) in the storage room. From what we have seen, Rosen is a good man who saves lives and has kept his zaniness. This is what Don is betraying.
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The idea of an intensified betrayal is prepared by the episode’s mysterious opening: the camera looks up from the floor at the face we will later identify as Dr Rosen, who it turns out is resuscitating both the doorman and Mad Men itself after its long months of hibernation. This is too ponderous to be experienced as a joke, and it’s also too grim. Dr Rosen pops up
again in the elevator, that quintessential place of brief encounter for the series, and then in Don’s office, where he has the rare privilege of overhearing Don in creative mode. There are signs of what may be a budding friendship between the two men, forged perhaps when they shared the near-death experience of the building’s doorman, "Jonesie," who collapses in front of them, thus giving Rosen the chance to show his medical skills. When he visits Don’s office (the company has the Leica account, and Don has offered the doctor a free camera), Rosen refers to their two kinds of work as if medicine and advertising had much in common. Don modestly rejects the suggestion, but the idea has been established of medical life-saving as a standard by which other sorts of work, like advertising, can be judged. We discover that Don has been sleeping with Rosen’s wife only when the doctor is called away from a dinner party at Don and Megan’s to deal with a medical emergency late on a snowy New Year’s Eve--so late and so snowy that taxis will be unavailable and Rosen leaves for the hospital on skis dug up (with Don’s help) in the storage room. From what we have seen, Rosen is a good man who saves lives and has kept his zaniness. This is what Don is betraying.