“I have an announcement to make: It’s gonna be a beautiful day!”
As season five has progressed, it has felt at times like a game of bizarre one-upmanship with each episode trying to outdo and out-weird the last. It’s been fascinating for better or worse; thankfully, tonight’s falls squarely in the former category. Roger Sterling does LSD! Like Pete and Lane’s fight last week, it is a concept that, on a lesser show, might feel like fan-service. We know Mad Men is better than that, though. This episode plays one-upmanship on itself, to the point where Peggy got high and jacked a stranger off at a showing of Born Free and I nearly forget about it by episode’s end, let alone cared all that much.
It almost feels like Matt Weiner wants to demonstrate to the world just how strong his command is of every cinematic device he can think of. The worst part is, he’s doing an excellent job. Tonight featured everything from cartoon-world visual and sound effects to a disjointed narrative with foreshadowing. Roger Sterling’s LSD trip was as much fun for me as it seemed for Roger. Alcohol is opera! Bert Cooper is Abraham Lincoln! Sterling doesn’t even give a shit the Black Sox fixed the 1919 World Series; he’s just thrilled with the view from the tub. Not content to spin the wheels on an occasion the writing staff absolutely could have gotten away with it, Jane opens up about a divorce to Roger during their trip. When she can’t recall it the morning after, the payoff is bittersweet. Unlike Joan’s separation in “Mystery Date,” this one doesn’t allow itself to soak in melodrama. Even still, it won’t be painless—maybe even more so. “It’s going to be expensive,” says Jane, pulling away from a kiss.
Don and Megan’s trip, however, fares considerably worse. The Howard Johnson’s of the ‘60s is an acid trip in and of itself, it seems. Thanks to the episode’s structure, the vacation went uninterrupted by the simultaneous LSD and Peggy plots. Having followed a cartoonish drug trip sequence also contributes to make this ordeal exceedingly tense. What happened? Don pulled Megan off of a team she felt she was contributing to (though whether or not she actually does anything remains to be seen—we know she “goes to casting,” at least). Don started working at the restaurant. Megan didn’t like the orange sherbet. And that was all she wrote. Megan hounds ice cream like a regular Betty Draper to prove a point, Don accuses her of embarrassing him, and Megan proceeds to embarrass him. I really enjoy how naturally the fight progressed, especially given that it was over pretty innocuous behavior. Because they actually know a thing or two about each other, Don’s fights with Megan are a lot more stinging than they ever were with Betty (though in a lot of ways just as childish). For the time Megan was missing, the tension was heightened thanks to the groundwork “Mystery Date” laid out, introducing us to newer, more frightening times.
So what does all this have to do with being from a different planet? Michael Ginsberg’s odd speech to Peggy and this episode’s title point in the same thematic direction. For Don, “far away places” may polarize him. He flashes back to the trip home from Disney Land, full of nostalgia. Do they represent something exotic and unattainable, like Born Free, or wherever Roger Sterling thought he was? I’m not sure, but I do know from four and a half seasons of Mad Men that whatever it does represent will always remain just barely out of reach. Peggy and Ginsberg’s scene rides that downward emotional wave that Mad Men thrives on. It started out like a joke, but the mood changes.
“Are there any others like you?” Peggy asked Ginsberg.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find any.”