Mad Men
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He is, so to speak, a man without a country.
Pete tells Don he used to carry a notebook full of ideas.
Nobody had ever told him that before, and now he wonders if its true.
The Campbells are upper-crust by name but not by tax bracket.
The family used to be loaded, he says, but Petes grandfather dropped it all in 29.
The Campbells have, however, managed to hold on to their social connections.
One of Petes ancestors was a farmer with Isaac Roosevelt.
Pete looks like he swallowed a wasp.
Like the Pete-Trudy scenes, the Don-Betty material is also about investment.
Helen Bishops ex-husband is banging on Helens door.
Im supposed to see my kids, and I know shes in there, he says.
She and Betty smoke and drink and talk.
She says he was always in Manhattan, spending time with other women.
Don pitches a Bethlehem Steel campaign asserting that steel built the American city.
Would you prefer an I beam on a plate with a pat of butter on it?
Then Walter allows that maybe he objects because Im not from a city.
They make him want to go home.
This is one ofMad Mens more inexplicably touching interludes.
Glen is young but preternaturally calm and has no sense of boundaries.
He walks in on Betty in the bathroom, while shes urinating, and refuses to leave.
He asks for a lock of her hair, and she gives it to him.
Why does she tolerate his creepiness?
Maybe shes just projecting her loneliness onto a lonely boy.
Or maybe theres a strange but true chemistry between them, something that resists labels.
Shes happy making him happy.
When he goes upstairs for the night, lock of hair in hand, she smiles.Good deed done.
She tries to put on a brave face.
Happy families all around.
My real concern is the children.
I mean, the baby wont know the difference, but that poor little boy.
The person taking care of him isnt giving him what he needs.
Cut that sentence right before the comma, and its Betty feeling sorry for Betty.
Throughout, Bettys talking about Helen but also about herself, a common tactic inMad Mens psychoanalytically sensitive dialogue.
Bettys not comfortable in her home, her family, or her skin.
Throughout this scene, the camera often assumes a slightly elevated vantage point: Betty looking down on Betty.
We learn that Petes mothers family had orchards at 204th Street when it was all open space.
Trudy asks Pete to tell Mrs. Lyman the story about his great-great-aunt getting in a fight with a Hessian.
You tell it, dear, Pete says.
You tell it so much better than I do.
The closing-credits song kicks in: Manhattan, performed by Ella Fitzgerald.
Excerpted with permission fromMad Men: Carouselby Matt Zoller Seitz.
