Mad Men - Review: A Fallen King

Recap video and review of Mad Men - Season 6 Episode 5 - The Flood:

Mad Men often deals with history in broad strokes, addressing the prevailing ideologies of the time, and the conflicts that arose from these perspectives. However, the show used to deal with history directly, and fairly often, to boot. I'm thinking of the earlier seasons which dealt with the Kennedy Assassination or the death of Marilyn Monroe. Some historical events are given more glancing mention than others, but they are all important, indelibly etched into the fabric of the period. "The Flood" addresses one such historical event, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The event is approached from dual perspectives of genuine grief and white guilt, and it's this centralizing narrative that makes the episode so engaging. It would be far too easy to write an episode like this and allow the event itself to dictate the direction of the hour. Yet "The Flood" has a lot more going on than just the death of a much-loved public figure, though that action binds the disparate storylines this week. We have the continuation of grievances both personal and professional, and while it's not an episode that forwards the overarching plot of the season (centered on Don's infidelity or SCDP finding its feet as an organization pitted against rival ad agencies), the hour helps to develop the broader themes at work in the season: loneliness, uncertainty, anachronism, and the devolution of society.

Credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

This is kind of a tricky episode to recap or review, in a lot of ways, as it eschews traditional plot structure in favor of an episodic melange of different little stories. Some of the stories are defined by how characters react to the assassination of MLK. Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), of all people, proves to be the voice of racial sensitivity, chastising Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) for complaining that coverage of the assassination is pre-empting all of his TV spots. Pete calls Harry a racist and a pig, and they seem ready to come to blows before Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) intercedes and forces them to shake hands like gentlemen (although this tactic doesn't really take). Yet Pete isn't 100% in the clear, morally. He uses the assassination as an opportunity to get back into Trudy's (Alison Brie) good graces, offering to come back home and sleep at the house so Trudy and their daughter won't be alone. The phone call between husband and wife is played straight, and it's entirely up to the viewer whether they read Pete's offer as an act bred of genuine concern, or if he's merely leaping at the chance for an in-road home. But Vincent Kartheiser plays it wonderfully, making Pete sensible, if not noble, while not necessarily dulling any of the self-involved characteristics that have inspired viewers to loathe him over the course of these six seasons. It's a wonderful, nuanced portrayal.

Credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

Yet that's not really the meat of the episode, as we linger with Don (Jon Hamm), who accompanies Megan (Jessica Pare) to an advertising awards ceremony, where the current Mrs. Draper is nominated. At the ceremony, they run into Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), who is also nominated. Paul Newman is the guest speaker, and the episode gets an amusing bit out of how difficult he is to see, given where the principal cast is seated. Yet things go pear-shaped pretty quickly, once news of Dr. King's assassination is announced, as guests hurry to the phones, causing a panicked rush. In the aftermath the next day, we get a unifying storyline of our characters showing surprise that their black colleagues are showing up to work, having assumed that they would have taken the day off, in the wake of the disturbing news. But that's not the case, and while people like Peggy and Joan (Christina Hendricks) try to do their best to show their sympathy, it all rings a bit hollow, as though their own guilt as white women is forcing them to overcompensate. The grim determination of the black employees forces the white staff to continue business as usual, and in that sense, the episode follows suit, portraying how Peggy's relationship with her boyfriend has changed. She wants to move into an apartment on the East Side, but ultimately loses out on the space. However, it's apparently no big deal to Abe, who reveals that he abhors the idea of living on the East Side, since he imagined them raising their kids on the West Side. Though Peggy lost the apartment and the advertising award in one fell swoop, she doesn't seem the worse for wear, as Abe's discussion about their future (revealing that they, in fact, have one) lifts her spirits in a big way.

Ginsberg (Ben Feldman), meanwhile, is set up with a pretty young teacher by his meddling father, who wants his son to put himself out there. I can't entirely be sure what Ginsberg's issue is, whether it's a latent anxiety disorder, or a social disorder of some kind, but the date is a bit of a mess. Hey, maybe he's just a quirky guy, more Woody Allen than Don Draper. But it doesn't dull how awkward it was to hear Ginsberg insist that he's not the lothario his father paints him as, since he's never had sex before, not even once. The teacher is polite all the way through, rebuffing Ginsberg by telling him that this won't be "the night," but telling him that he's clearly handsome. The date wasn't going anywhere substantive, but there's still a minor sense of loss at its early end, following the news of Dr. King's assassination coming through. Ginsberg just feels like a fully-realized character, a sad-sack who has made it pretty far in life, despite lacking certain essential life skills, whether cooking or social competence. He simply feels realer than your average character, which is not to say that other characters don't feel the same way. Yet Ginsberg is a different case, as I don't feel we need to know as much about him in order to identify with him, the way we might need to know a bit more about, say, Harry or Stan in order to identify with either of them. There's just something about how he resists change that marks him as something of a sad figure. As Ginsberg's father explains, it's not as if Noah was going to take his father on the Ark with him once the flood came. Ginsberg can't live with his dad forever. He needs to put himself out there, yet Ginsberg just can't cross that divide yet. It's an intimately affecting story.

Credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

All of this is without even getting into Don's story, which is the episode's best. Betty (January Jones) badgers Don into picking up the kids, and not without reason, since he completely forgot (as is his nature). Don picks up Bobby, who has been banned from watching TV, leading father and son to hit the movies to watch Planet of the Apes. This bonding time isn't compelling in and of itself, so much as it is intriguing for what it tells us about Don. He clearly wants to be a better father than he is, but he's a fractured man, in many respects. The lack of a real father figure in his life, a positive influence on which to mold his own parenting, makes him seem like a man who doesn't really know what he's doing as a father (or worse, a man who doesn't particularly want to be a father at all). However, the most poignant moment of this storyline is in how Bobby reacts to the MLK assassination. Betty and her family learn that Henry plans on running for the Senate, and though Henry isn't Bobby's father, it's Henry whom Bobby fears for.

While with Don, Bobby discloses that he's afraid Henry will be shot like MLK, and though it's not portrayed as a moment where we're meant to infer that Bobby sees Henry as his real father, it's hard to imagine that Don doesn't take it that way. It gets worse when Megan gets on Don about his lousy parenting, Don talks about how fathers occasionally tend to fake their love for their kids. However, Don goes onto detail how the artifice can potentially become real once you're actually in the thick of fatherhood. “One day they get older and you see them do something and you feel that feeling that you were pretending to have," Don tells Megan. "And it feels like your heart is going to explode." And in that moment, Megan gets it. It isn't that Don doesn't want to be a father, but simply that the parameters for fatherhood are changing. Society is growing ever more chaotic, as evidenced by the Harlem riots in the wake of MLK's assassination, and Don was having a hard enough time navigating the minefields of fatherhood without having to negotiate the meaning behind brazen, senseless tragedies. Childhood is about grasping for meaning that your parents can only attempt to provide. Don lacks the necessary tools to impart the meaning behind the randomness of the world. His despondency is reflective of his own guilt at his failure as a father. Perhaps this is also reflective of the white guilt that comes to the fore in the wake of the assassination of MLK, though that might be a bridge too far.

"The Flood" is a thematically rich hour of television that further bolsters Mad Men into the pantheon of great, nuanced TV series.