Mad Men: So, Did You Buy Canadian Club?

I knew that the hype surrounding Mad Men would be leaping at its finest form earlier this week, because it's so darned exciting to get to watch a TV show that isn't phony, ridiculous housewives running around doing silly things.

Oh, wait - that actually was part of Mad Men.

After turning over the season opener in my mind over and over, here is my most vivid comeaway: I bought some Canadian Club and I want a BMW.

The bottles are Canadian Club are everywhere on the Mad Men sets. Don has one in his office, maybe a second one on his desk, one on the bar in his little apartment, one on his coffee table, one near his bed...if Don Draper was in the scene, so was his Acting Buddy, Canadian Club.

There were bottles of Canadian Club in the other seasons as well. Don has always been a fan of the rich, smooth taste of the 80 proof whisky (first distilled in Detroit in 1858 before its owner, Hiram Walker, moved to Windsor, Ontario to escape the clutches of the "dry" movements in Michigan). However, back in the day, Don was a married man. His bottle stayed on the bar cart or in the liquor cabinet or on the silver tray, neatly, because his life had the imposed order required of a married man.

Oh, you can still see Don working to maintain order, or at least the illusion of order. Don would always prefer actual order, but since his life is built on other people's fictional assumptions about him, a thinly veiled mask of order is all that's required. He has to shine his own shoes now, and he has to make his own bed. But he also combs his hair with an almost manic intensity - it's as glossy as a toupee. However, this keeping-up-appearances falls like a house of cards when Don turns from the mirror: his hair is long in the back and falls sloppily over his collar.

Very un-Don Draperlike.

However, despite the fact that he looks all shot to hell in the romance department, that's in control, too. He has the stripper and that's his holiday. He obviously sees her often, and he lets her punish him while they have sex. She smacks the crap out of him! Self-hate and pleasure, all in one neat little package.

When he goes to dinner with the 25-year-old, he tries all of his lines, but she doesn't bite. She does the Danielle thing: Present, then entice. Or whatever she said. She stands up to show off her borrowed dress and then doesn't let him paw her in the cab. She tells him that they can't see each other until New Year's (this is Thanksgiving week) because if it's meant to be, it will keep.

She knows her advertising as well as Don: keep them longing for it, and they'll want it more.

The new offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Price are crowded, and I love the idea of the imaginary second floor, even if Don and Cooper don't. The idea that there's more than there appears, but that there's also nothing more than what you see. It's a deep thought, if you think about it. Everyone's illusions are just illusions. It's the house of cards from the opening sequence.

I liked how Peggy has grown and become more commanding, and I like the fact that she thinks like a PR person sometimes - she doesn't make the distinction between PR and advertising that members of those professions enjoy debating. She makes decisions behind Don's back that need to be corrected, and she takes her punishment and lets him have his moments of fury, but later she comes back and tells him she didn't appreciate it. Okay. I look forward to seeing more.

Thrilled that Joan has her own office. Huzzah for Joan. Sadly, and significantly, Joan's office has doors leading to the hall along which the executive's offices are located, as well as the little hamster trails that hold the little folk. She is literally the line between the two camps.

I thought that Don's swimsuit ad was good. Really, if you're wearing a two-piece bathing suit, you're pointing out that there are body parts that need to be covered. So, really - what's the point of pretending to be modest?

Don has made the Jantzen people want their ad. This was a scene that a lot of people equated to Don telling the Jantzen people what he really wanted to tell Betty: Get your things and get out of my place. But Don knew what he was doing: he was making the Jantzen people want the ad by telling them that they were fools and he wasn't going to suffer them, either gladly or at all.

All of a sudden he knew how he had to be. Perhaps we'll see this in tomorrow night's episode in a scene with Betty: the brash, new Don Draper who is going to act exactly the way he thinks, as opposed to exercising polite modesty.

Betty has fit Henry into the slot left when she kicked Don out. She's now Mrs. Henry Francis, and the new mother-in-law doesn't like her. Betty has never dealt with a mother-in-law before, and the elder Mrs. Francis believes Betty to be a very silly woman.

Betty has shed the layers of skirts and pastel dresses, and it's not just a change in styles over time. She's adopted what she sees as a more fitting persona for the wide of the former Rockefeller appointee - all Lady Bird Johnson hair and suits. I think she stopped being impressed with Don after she realized exactly what a nobody he was, opting instead for the more glamorous, and to her, substantial, social standing offered by Henry. Despite her efforts to climb the social ladder, Betty has to be a little sad; her new husband is not interested in having sex with her unless it's some verboten place, like the car. Could it be that Henry really wanted her for the excitement of the chase and the beauty of the prize? Or does he just not want to do the deed in Don's old bedroom (there is a new bed)?

Because Betty won't leave the old house. She says it's because of the children, but anyone with an eye in their head can tell that Betty is not interested in the children's well-being. Sally is a scary Barbie-doll wraith - the actress who plays her has lost all of her baby fat. Bobby is desperate to please with his determination to eat sweet potatoes after Sally disgraces herself by fake-puking them on the lily-white tablecloth. The only time they seem at ease is with Don, but Betty is furious with Sally for trying to phone Don in the middle of the night and keeps baby Gene at the housekeeper's rather than let Don see him.

As an aside, I have wondered if Gene is actually Don's. Didn't she have a quickie with some guy right before she found out she was pregnant?

And when Don's lawyer says that he must tell her to leave the house, Don says he doesn't want to do that. But he gets angry about baby Gene being kept from him, because Betty won't go out of her way (apparently, since Gene is a diaper-needing baby, the absent dad doesn't take him with him on his weekends with the kids). And Don gets really angry when he brings Sally and Bobby home at the appointed time and has to wait an hour like a guest in his own house for Betty and Henry to get back from dinner. He asks Betty when she is going to leave, and she said they were still looking for a house.
 
Don tells her that she better get out or he'll start charging rent - and then he challenges Henry to buy the house from him. Betty tells him to leave, and when Henry says that Betty should, in fact, be looking for a new house, she tells him that Don doesn't get to call the shots. This is her power, and she is going to wield it as hard as she can.
 
Tomorrow!