The Monolith - Mad Men - 7x04

When Are We?
For the second week in a row we are not pegged down to a specific date.  Last week it appeared to be April or May 1969, and ostensibly not much time has passed based on everyone's reactions to the office dynamic that now features Copy Writer Don Draper. This was the year of the Amazin/Miracle Mets who would go from expansion team in 1962 to World Champs in 1969, having not finished among the top teams in any of the interim seasons.  They don't mention the Mets opponent, but we know it is a weekday and they are home so I am going with a game against my Pittsburgh Pirates, April 23, 1969.  This is not certain, but there are not many options.  It could also be May against the Houston Astros. The opening series was against Montreal, but that seems too early.

The Monolith
The IBM computer displaces creative in the most obvious and largest move to marginalize creative.  Don has conversations about people being replaced by robots.  As they point out,“It’s not symbolic.” “No, it’s quite literal.”   Creative gets all of the morning to get their stuff the heck out of there so they may have the privilege of continuing their work in as noisy an environment as possible.

The computers, spurring SC&P into the future, even look like the monoliths from 2001, which spurred the evolution of man.  Big rectangles that stand up.  We get a really good glimpse of the installation team wheeling the last monolith into place.

I suppose it's fitting that 2001 was released about a year prior to when the events in "The Monolith" take place.  Sterling Cooper, in whatever form it has existed the last decade, has always gone kicking and screaming into the future.  Whether on a micro level where Paul Kinsey laments that he likes the agency just the way it is, or larger concerns like how Cooper fears what a liberal Kennedy presidency may mean for the agency (at that point still a beacon of the 1950s), the agency resists change, begrudgingly accepts it, and then adapts and sees that the new stuff surprisingly isn't as bad as they expected.  It's a cycle that repeats throughout the series.*


* I rewatched the entire series leading up to this season's premiere, and this was something I only picked up on watching six seasons in quick succession. 

At two distinct points, the agency has an "adapt or die" moment, when they are about to be sold to McCann and eaten alive, and when Don comes to the realization they are not going to make it at their current scale, inciting the merger.  These are both more of a flight-or-fight response than a willingness to embrace the future.

We know much of the progressive views on the show stem from Pete, starting early in the series with his embracing of the tobacco study and his relatively micro targeting of Admiral televisions toward blacks.  A lot of worthwhile thoughts come from Harry too, which is tough to admit.  Todd Vanderwerff pointed out that these forward thinking characters are often the most distasteful people on the screen, and are so irritating to the other characters that the message gets lost.

Harry finally gets his way, which is objectively the smart thing to do.  It's done via what I believe will become an unholy alliance between Cutler and Harry.   It was they who made the change, it was they who made the announcement and it was they who unnecessarily wore hard hats while doing it.  And it was Ginsberg, the young, Jewish and anti-war progressive, who railed against it.

So for the first time, SC is willingly moving into the future, albeit at the expense of creative and at the behest of Dickbag and Machiavelli.  And at the moment Don is a relic, and needs to evolve.

Scale Wins Out
Booze Allen is the one of the largest government contractor because Booze Allen is one of the largest government contractor.

When competing for a contract (or in Mad Men, a campaign) the ability to throw a large amount of resources at the problem allows the contractor to bring down the price, as they benefit from economies of scale, as opposed to smaller contractors which may not be able to provide the same price points.

SC and CGC realized this in a bar when they figured the big agencies would simply take the ideas of the small agencies and provide them at a lower cost.  It was also pointed out that it was no surprise the "'largest agency in the world" won out Heinz Ketchup over two great campaigns from Don and Peggy. 

SC&P both passively and actively follows this approach.  Passively by eminent domain-ing the creative lounge and then actively by using their biggest wrinkliest brain for 25 tag lines on burgers.  With the need to buy Don out weighing heavily, and the fear of competing against him when they are at the weakest creatively, SC&P is a dog in a manger.

But with Chevy and Sunkist, these burgers, Dow and possibly Vicks coming back (with P&G on the way?), adequacy is fine and a bass-ackwards strategy of doing the creative strategy bass-ackwards is allowable. 


Nickels and Dimes

• Cutler wanted to call Ted back as reinforcement with Don returning, not because of Ted's creative prowess
• Much like how everything Lou says on the call is neutral/useless or in the interest of self preservation 
• Could there be some sort of Cutler engineered Lou/Harry buy-out of Don?  Cooper told Harry they had to get bigger before they got bigger.  Well, their bigger.  And more, smaller share holders who owe Cutler would sure help Cutler.  
• I am really reading into some thing but I think Cutler is going to try to take over the world.
• Ginsberg ordering Don around until he gets tired and gives up.  Don abdicates responsibility on the couch much like he abdicated his responsibilities last season, allowing the partners to push him out
• It's an opportunity for Don to get some support but he literally walks away
• Don made himself unessential, and Cooper pointed out that they managed without him fine
•  The actor who plays Lou, Allan Harvey, was on Olbermann talking Mad Men and the 1972 Dolphins
• You have to love the old clip used in the intro
•  Don never had such a cause > effect drinking reaction before
• Though Margaret was at Woodstock, but that's not til August.  Post moon-landing
• Don and Peggy are both sweating like whoa
• Interesting seeing the flipped dynamic continue between them, again with Don sitting lower than her
• So much activity in the background again!  And so many boots! 
• A note on the boots...the color and cut of the clothes on the secretaries makes Peggy look even more dowdy and angry.  Obviously there's a difference in status there.  But it's almost like they are going out of their way to make Peggy constantly mad at the world.  Except for Stan.
• Mathis covers for Don like he's just another underling
• Don is reading Portnoy's Complaint which I won't pretend I've read
• Don inhabits a dead man's office, but he's in advertising purgatory
• Could Mr. and the former Mrs. Sterling have looked any more like the stereotypical rich parents?
• Lou gets the laugh of the day as he puts his jacket on and stares out his window upon the great City of New York.  Then bribes Peggy to like him/sticks her with Don.   Okay, Lou, you can stay.
• Don calls Freddy, like he's his sponsor 
• Lots of talk about the stars, and even a moon shot
• Poor Ellery. First he's named Ellery.  Now this.
• But is Margaret being much less selfish than Roger has been?  Not that it makes it okay.  
• How much shit shall Don eat?

Music
"On a Carousel"
The Hollies

Soon you'll leave and then I'll lose you
Still we're going round
On a carousel, on a carousel

* I'm writing this much later than usual.  My notes say "Carousel" and it took me forever to remember what that was.


Next Week on Incongruous Mad Men Clips
"What?" - Betty Francis

This was actually helpful because it reminded use there are only three episodes left in the abbreviated season